CDP clicks between tracks.and at the begininning??


I have a new CDP and I am impressed with the sound so far but it has an odd quirck and I was hoping someone could shed some light on what's going on. My player uses a Sony transport and it sounds good but on most CD's it will go "click click" at the beginning of the disc and inbetween tracks as the disc progresses. It happens consistently on most discs but some discs won't make the mechanical clicking from the transport. It is the very same mechanical click I get from my integrated when increasing or decreasing volume or changing inputs. This suggests to me that it may have some thing to do with the relay switch on the display of the transport. On some discs however there will be a very short click at the beginning and then the transport will be silent throught the disc or throughout most of the disc. Its almost as if it depends on how much time is inbetween tracks as if I play a cd that the tracks change but ther music contues from one track to the next without pause or without regular but short pause there is no "click click" noise from the CDP. I like this player but am wondering if anyone else has noticed this type of anomolie on their players and what it could be. Is this a normal function of some CDP's?
I should mention the clicks between tracks are consistant with the disc or track that I am using so it is not random at the CDP's end but depends on the particular track or disc.Some discs may click between 2 tracks out of 12 and some will click for 10 tracks out of 12. I put in an HDCD disc in it didn't click anywhere throught the disc.
Any advise would be highly appreciated.
Thanks
128x128mitchb

Showing 1 response by redkiwi

If a digital stream to a DAC is broken for any period of time then the DAC will produce a click. Therefore it is possible that what is happening is that the digital stream is going dead between tracks when in fact the packets should be filled with zeros - digital silence. This could be a function of how the player moves between the tracks listed in the TOC. This seems to me to be a poor design if not a faulty unit. The explanation that the DAC needs to process some digital crap every now and then to improve sound quality appears to be BS to me. But perhaps the unit uses a form of reclocking with a buffer and decides to clear the buffer and re-sync when there is a sustained period of digital silence encountered, which could produce a click. But there is no reason why good design could not suppress the click. There are plenty of devices that use reclocking with a buffer that do not click.