Arcam CD5 CD player cannot do gapless playback (EDIT - software update now available - see post 86)

[ScarboroughMark]

Just bought the Arcam CD5 CD player as a What Hi-Fi Top Recommendation with 5 stars all round, only to discover that it can't provide gapless playback on industry standard mass-produced CDs, even though this is (I understand) the audio CD redbook standard. In other words, it introduces an unwanted 1 second pause in between tracks within continuous music (such as opera or Pink Floyd). It can't even play a CD of Beethoven's 5th properly as tracks 3 and 4 should continue seamlessly. When I contacted Arcam they said this was something that required a software update which should be available soon. Clearly they should have tested it more thoroughly before putting it on the market.

I am baffled as to how What Hi-Fi can give a top recommendation with 5 stars all round to a player that doesn't meet the redbook standard and can't do gapless playback in commercial CDs. Anyone wanting to purchase this player should be given a health warning until Arcam fix it. And What Hi-Fi need to make sure readers know this before giving it a top recommendation.

 

[podknocker]

I bought an Arcam CDS27 SACD player and sold it new and unopened as part of a trade in, but if I remember correctly, this old player struggled and didn't play CDs without extra gaps.

Makes you wonder what transports, logic and firmware they use in their players. I wouldn't touch Arcam now.

Saying that, my Audiolab Omnia still struggles to read CDs, even after a servo update on CD sent through the post from IAG UK. I won't buy this brand again either.

Also, Cyrus had CD read issues on a £2000 CD player a while back. What is wrong with these companies?

The Red Book standard is 41 years old and new CD players can't read / access / play discs correctly.

It must be the brands in house software that struggles. It's a joke and an overpriced one on many occasions.

Some companies seem to have a very cavalier attitude to their interpretation of this standard.

If you go online and buy a new £699 CD player, it shouldn't have these issues AND it should last 10 years.

 

[jetblack9090]

I get the complaint, however let me just say that I own somewhere in the neighborhood of about 3,000 CDs that I've amassed over the last 20 years, and honestly I can count on one hand how many albums that I have that actually require gapless playback or what benefit from gapless playback. I own a lot of jazz albums and a lot of rock and roll and pop albums from the 60s 70s and '80s The vast majority of these albums do not require or aren't recorded to be gapless.

So at the end of the day I get the complaint and I understand how it could be frustrating however for a lot of people myself included it's not an issue. Plus arcam never said it was gapless, in the paperwork for the ST5 streamer it specifically mentions gapless but it doesn't mention it with the CD5.

Plus at the end of the day according to you they told you that they would be releasing a firmware update that would fix the issue. Kind of reminds me of my Yamaha CD player that I have that when I got it wasn't gapless, which wasn't a problem, but they released the software update that made it gapless, which is a nice bonus.

I would tell you to enjoy it how it is and the sound of it how it is and if you find you can't listen to your opera albums that should go to show you that you probably shouldn't be listening to opera albums in the first place.

 

[manicm]

Just bought the Arcam CD5 CD player as a What Hi-Fi Top Recommendation with 5 stars all round, only to discover that it can't provide gapless playback on industry standard mass-produced CDs, even though this is (I understand) the audio CD redbook standard. In other words, it introduces an unwanted 1 second pause in between tracks within continuous music (such as opera or Pink Floyd). It can't even play a CD of Beethoven's 5th properly as tracks 3 and 4 should continue seamlessly. When I contacted Arcam they said this was something that required a software update which should be available soon. Clearly they should have tested it more thoroughly before putting it on the market.

I am baffled as to how What Hi-Fi can give a top recommendation with 5 stars all round to a player that doesn't meet the redbook standard and can't do gapless playback in commercial CDs. Anyone wanting to purchase this player should be given a health warning until Arcam fix it. And What Hi-Fi need to make sure readers know this before giving it a top recommendation.

Shocking

 

[manicm]

I get the complaint, however let me just say that I own somewhere in the neighborhood of about 3,000 CDs that I've amassed over the last 20 years, and honestly I can count on one hand how many albums that I have that actually require gapless playback or what benefit from gapless playback. I own a lot of jazz albums and a lot of rock and roll and pop albums from the 60s 70s and '80s The vast majority of these albums do not require or aren't recorded to be gapless.

So at the end of the day I get the complaint and I understand how it could be frustrating however for a lot of people myself included it's not an issue. Plus arcam never said it was gapless, in the paperwork for the ST5 streamer it specifically mentions gapless but it doesn't mention it with the CD5.

Plus at the end of the day according to you they told you that they would be releasing a firmware update that would fix the issue. Kind of reminds me of my Yamaha CD player that I have that when I got it wasn't gapless, which wasn't a problem, but they released the software update that made it gapless, which is a nice bonus.

I would tell you to enjoy it how it is and the sound of it how it is and if you find you can't listen to your opera albums that should go to show you that you probably shouldn't be listening to opera albums in the first place.

Gapless playback on a CD player shouldn't be a 'nice bonus '. The lack thereof is unacceptable. And it's not Redbook compliant.

For many like the OP who listen to classical music this is just on, and it's frankly dishonest of WHF to omit this from the review. I would never consider it otherwise.

I was equally shocked to learn Emotiva's new CDP also doesn't do gapless either, which is not inexpensive. Again just unacceptable.

 

[Freddy58]

My CDP has no such problems. I have to say that I’d find it very frustrating if gaps were inserted where they shouldn’t be. Quite a lot of music/albums I listen to have tracks that flow from one to the next. Indeed an album like Tubular Bells would be ruined given the only gap is from side one to side two (original album).

 

[Gray]

I would tell you to enjoy it how it is and the sound of it how it is and if you find you can't listen to your opera albums that should go to show you that you probably shouldn't be listening to opera albums in the first place.

Have you thought about a job in customer relations? 😉

 

[Al ears]

Indeed an issue. I do wonder if gapless playback was ever a function required by the Redbook standard. I doubt it.
Obviously, when reviewing a CD P you do so on discs you can reference and those may not necessarily involve gapless.
Is it an issue of the disc creation itself? I have no experience of a CDP inserting gaps by itself.

 

[Al ears]

Have you thought about a job in customer relations? 😉

perhaps he already is, sounds like it....

 

[Gray]

If you go online and buy a new £699 CD player, it shouldn't have these issues AND it should last 10 years.

I'd want a minimum of 20 years.
I've had longer than that out of players costing a quarter of that price.

 

[WayneKerr]

This is ridiculous! I've owned five CDPs and they have all played a CD as it should be heard, gapless or not. What is wrong with Arcam!

 

[Al ears]

I'd want a minimum of 20 years.
I've had longer than that out of players costing a quarter of that price.

If you want a CDP to last that long I think you're asking a bit much of the laser manufacturers and the mechanics of the device itself, it's not exactly a solid state amp.

 

[Gray]

This is ridiculous! I've owned five CDPs and they have all played a CD as it should be heard, gapless or not. What is wrong with Arcam!

Just another case of modern stuff being too clever for its own good - requiring software updates to fix things that never used to require any fixing.

 

[Gray]

If you want a CDP to last that long I think you're asking a bit much of the laser manufacturers and the mechanics of the device itself, it's not exactly a solid state amp.

I realise I've been very lucky with my sub £200 past players from Philips and Sony (and I bet all have done gapless)

Would really hope £700 worth would last over 10 years.

 

[Silverleaf]

I always hesitate buying brand new products for issues like this. I asked Arcam for product manuals from the new Radia series, but no answer yet. I think about replacing my Arcam A28 amp and Sonos Connect with external DAC, since I want to reduce the amount of components.

 

[Al ears]

I realise I've been very lucky with my sub £200 past players from Philips and Sony (and I bet all have done gapless)

Would really hope £800 worth would last over 10 years.

The mechanical parts and laser mechanism itself cannot be guaranteed for anything like that, no matter what the device itself costs.

 

[Freddy58]

The mechanical parts and laser mechanism itself cannot be guaranteed for anything like that, no matter what the device itself costs.

Indeed. My CDP had to be put in for repair (2 months out of warranty, so at my expense) due to issues with the drawer not wanting to open/close. No issues since, thankfully.

 

[Gray]

The mechanical parts and laser mechanism itself cannot be guaranteed for anything like that, no matter what the device itself costs.

I do understand that - which is why I say I've been lucky never to have had a CDP failure 👍

(Mechanical faults accounted for probably 70-80% of the faults in electronic products that I've repaired).

 

[twinkletoes]

Indeed an issue. I do wonder if gapless playback was ever a function required by the Redbook standard. I doubt it.
Obviously, when reviewing a CD P you do so on discs you can reference and those may not necessarily involve gapless.
Is it an issue of the disc creation itself? I have no experience of a CDP inserting gaps by itself.

Im pretty sure the data stored on a disc is one continuous stream/track like that of the of record and its actually the internal buffer that causes the gap. So its purely firmware dependant. Thats my understanding any how and could be wrong I normally am.

basically a disc load is just looking for the time stamps so it can skip to those time codes.

I've never actually come across a cd player that can't play gapless I just assumed they all could.

 

[Al ears]

Im pretty sure the data stored on a disc is one continuous stream/track like that of the of record and its actually the internal buffer that causes the gap. So its purely firmware dependant. Thats my understanding any how and could be wrong I normally am.

basically a disc load is just looking for the time stamps so it can skip to those time codes.

I've never actually come across a cd player that can't play gapless I just assumed they all could.

As far as I am aware LPs would have distinct gaps between tracks unless it wasn't meant to be there. How CDPs decipher this I am not sure. Surely there must be some dort of flag to mark track end?

 

[manicm]

Indeed an issue. I do wonder if gapless playback was ever a function required by the Redbook standard. I doubt it.
Obviously, when reviewing a CD P you do so on discs you can reference and those may not necessarily involve gapless.
Is it an issue of the disc creation itself? I have no experience of a CDP inserting gaps by itself.

Herbert Von Karajan was an early proponent of CD, and he in fact was responsible for the Redbook 74 minute length so that Beethoven's entire 9th Symphony could fit. As a perfectionist, he would not have tolerated a lack of gapless playback - the last two movements segue into one another.

How else, for example, would you listen to any Pink Floyd albums from 1973 - 1983 - all songs segue into one another, be it on CD or vinyl. Sgt Pepper was also gapless in some sections.

And if gapless was an issue - and it wasn't until now where I've owned about 5 disc players - then CDs would have died sooner.

It's UNACCEPTABLE to any music lover worth his collection.

 

[jetblack9090]

Gapless playback on a CD player shouldn't be a 'nice bonus '. The lack thereof is unacceptable. And it's not Redbook compliant.

For many like the OP who listen to classical music this is just on, and it's frankly dishonest of WHF to omit this from the review. I would never consider it otherwise.

If you want my honest opinion I kind of think or I should say I get the impression that whoever is making the software for modern CD players is doing so without gapless. Like everybody that makes the CD player more or less buys the software and the brains of the player to be able to play CDs but whoever has written that software has done so without gapless playback or being red book compliant as you say.

I think probably arcam will release the update which will make it gapless just like has been done with my Yamaha, although maybe not soon enough for some.

Have you thought about a job in customer relations? 😉

Actually I got into what I do now, I worked sales for 15 years. So yes I'm very intimately congruent with customer relations.

 

[Deleted member 201267]

Shocking

Exactly what i was going to type !

 

[Al ears]

Whilst I can understand how you lead one movement or track into the next on a vinyl LP I am not exactly sure how this is managed on digital data like a CD.
Anybody expand on this?

 

[manicm]

Whilst I can understand how you lead one movement or travo into the next on a vinyl LP I am not exactly sure how this is managed on digital data like a CD.
Anybody expand on this?

CD players have had no problem doing this since 1982???