Do we junk good CD players due to non-availability of drives?

I have a middle-aged Primare D30.2 which no longer works. Won’t load properly or play. 3 visits to the dealer over a year and it stopped again after a week. They say that replacement drives are no longer available for this nice player - thank you, Sony! Must I throw all 11kg away? I can’t afford a good new cd spinner.

 

Rip all your CDs to a NAS using EAC on a PC (exact audio copy) and get a network player with a good D/A converter.

 

There are some specialists that know how to repair these. There can be various issues like capacitors in the servo and weak lasers. Some lasers are now cloned in China but they tend to be those used in higher value Marantz and Sony transports.


If you find someone who's willing to check it out and has the right equipment to diagnose the fault then it's still possible to get many faults repaired. Mainstream repair shops would only repair it if there was a drop in board or transport replacement available which, sadly, is rarely the case these days.

An alternative would be to find a donor machine with another fault be and do it yourself but there can be recalibration issues with this (although I've not experienced that personally).

 

The advice to rip everything to NAS is certainly the way some people choose to go, but how long does it take to rip a CD and how long would a whole collection take? Plus the cost of the new equipment required. If it suits you, fine, but it won't suit everyone.