Rega Apollo R CD Player Problems

[geoffreyc]

Any other owners of Rega's Apollo R CD Player experienced any sort of quirky operating/behaviour with their player?

Have owned mine just over six months but due to moving house haven't really had much of an opportunity to use it much. Most of the time it behaves perfectly but on occasions I've noticed things such as after pressing 'play' playback won't start, player won't stop when it receives that command etc., after switching off player and unplugging it behaves itself perfectly again but then a week or two later it might occur again. I've done a google search and have discovered reports on US forums of the same symptoms I've outlined above and it seems like it could be down to the 'In House' operating system that I understand Rega have adopted for this model and previous ones (there are similar reports of these sort of glitches happening with the previous Apollo player as well), even some US dealers suggesting it could be due to an instability in the mains supply causing problems for the memory buffer the Apollo uses.

From past experiences having owned far too many players to count it isn't down to laser failure (they seem to either work or don't) or anything that could be classed as a fault more like an eccentricity perhaps!

Anybody else noticed these things with their player?

 

[jonathanRD]

I have the 'clam-shaped' Apollo.

Occasionally (only very occasionally) have I experienced some slight glitches. Apart from not initially loading/reading a CD, the only other issue once or twice is that when fast-forwarding from track to track it gets stuck and will not work and I had to re-load the CD.

I've had it since January 2010 - so I wouldn't consider the above to be indicative of an underlying fault.

 

[geoffreyc]

No, you're right I wouldn't consider them faults. Thanks for your reply, at least I'm not the only one experiencing these things!

 

[Al ears]

Reading, or not, a CD is down to condition of the laser and or disc itself. Any other 'glitch', once the disc is 'read' is by any definiition a fault.

 

[stevebrock]

The software on my Apollo R was very quirky too - it's the it is

 

[spikey123]

I had 2 of these. The first stuck at 30 seconds into the second track, then 40 seconds. I took the disc out and cleaned it. It did the same thing, so I turned it off then back on and it played. This was a loaner whilst a new one came. The new one was worse. It jumped straight from track1 to 2 on 4 out of 6 discs. Then it said the disc was empty. Then it jumped randomly to a track when I tried to play one from track one. I read similar reports from a user in the USA from 2012, so it sounds like this fault has been there from the beginning and is still there. I prefer my 1992 Pioneer PDS901 that I recapped and changed the output op amps on, it trounces the new players like Cyrus and Rega everytime for playing all and any of my cds. And they wonder why people don't buy British! :wall:

 

[bigfish786]

my Apollo has been a bit quirky too, although mine was 2nd hand, so i've no idea how its been used, but once i'd cleaned the rail on which the laser runs, all the issues have stopped. it seemed to be sticking, causing the reading faults.

the only other thing that it does is it dislikes cd's with enhanced content on them, like Iron Maiden cd's with photo's/video's etc on them. it does play them, but sometimes takes a lot longer to "initialise"

It still sounds amazing, so it's worth the odd quirk.

 

[jonathanRD]

Well - since I last posted in October, mine has not put a foot wrong, :clap: - gets used most days of the week at the moment.

 

[bigfish786]

I have more issues with my laptop than I ever have with the Apollo.

It gives it personality and character.

 

[spikey123]

I cannot see why any cd player should have "quirks". The technology is not new, all laptops and pcs can read them and you dont get more cheap and basic than that.

 

[spikey123]

The older players seemed to handle cds much better, I think the new ones are too fussy

 

[Radiskull]

OOOhhhh Yeah. This is my second unit, I thought the 1st one was faulty and fought with the dealer to swap it out for a new one at the time $1000 US. So I ove the sound of this CD player, it loud, clean, tight bass and tight snare sound, that's what I love about this CD player. I have never been confident to show it off to any one because it's always embarrased me and took a crap on me right when I needed it to shine.

Problems I have:

99.9% of the time original CD's will work fine as long as you DO NOT shuffle. I alwasy load the CD and then power on for it to track the contents properly other wise no gurantee.

God know how many CDRs I have wasted trying to burn at differnt speed under 8x for it to play reliably on this CD player, it never does, its just a hit and miss. I've also experimented with differnt burning software.

Problems with CDR's are some time it will read it and sometimes play a few songs and then just spend hours trying to lock on I mean you can here the laser struggle. It did this on both units. Never Never Never shuffle a CDR, it's game over.

Some times the play function or stop will not respond and it just keeps doing its thing. Tracking time is slow.

Great CD player but at the end of the day what matters more is it's reliability. The ability to power it on remotely, the ability to play any CD, the ability to to move from one song to the next. Sittig on the couch no one can see the DAC's, no one can see the torrodial transformer etc etc what I want is quick reliable interaction, how fast my tacks can play and here the cheap CD players work real good. So now I have the Apollo sitting on top of a Onkyo I bought off Amazon. It tracks everything locks on to tracks quick and works well.

Just my two cents I want another great sounding Hi Fi CD player but I am extremely skeptical of buying the high end one where you spend top dollar and then you have to be very mind full of them because they are tempermental diva's.

Still have it and listen to it every now and then, if any one has and tips and tricks and advice how I could solve the problems I'm having I'm all ears!