Audio Dropping Out on Rega Apollo and Saturn


I borrowed a Rega Apollo and Saturn for home audition from my local dealer.

On both CD players, I experienced audio drop outs from some of my CDs as they were playing. I noticed that these CDs did have some minor scratches, but nothing major. When I would play these same CDs on my Jolida JD100 CD player, I never experienced these problems.

Are there any Rega Apollo or Saturn owners that have experienced this problem with some of their CDs? It seems like to me that Rega does not have a very good error correction system as the laser scans the CD. So if you do happen to have some CDs with scratches, it could hinder an otherwise pleasant listening experience.

If there is no clear explanation or work-around for this, then I have no choice but to remove these players from my consideration.
wkass
I have the Apollo and don't have this problem. However, I treat my Cds more like LPs and they don't have any scratches to speak of.

Rega makes a big deal of the fact that the Apollo and Saturn analyze the CD before playing and optimize the player for each CD. It's possible that this means backing off of some of the error correction logic if able and that the player is being fooled in this particular case. This might also account for the sensitivity to vibration that Electroid mentions (although I have not experienced this). If the player were to back off of most of its error correction believing it was not necessary for a particular CD and was then hit with a large vibrational peak. Again, this is all speculation since, as far as I know, Rega has not provided details of this "optimization" routine.
Mrjstark

He said he borrowed the players. Very clearly stated.

Wkass,

Are you using the same input on your pre as the Jolida. If not you might try using the same input. Might be the pre section in your system.
Eldarado,
Thanks for coming to my defense. I auditioned these players to determine if it is a worthwhile upgrade over my Jolida player.

It looks like Jalanc42069 experienced the same issue.

I am using the same input into my Audio Research LS-7 preamp.
I borrowed a Rega Apollo and Saturn for home audition from my local dealer.

Sorry about that - I take it back.
Should have payed more attention.

It is interesting, since I have never heard about such a problems. I also have few CDs in less then perfect shape
but they played just fine.
As if it is a worthy upgrade over Jolida.......it is your choice of course. I think that I would probably keep the "J" and send it to get few mods and in the future upgrade to a player from the top shelve.
I own a Saturn I bought new. Definitely finicky with CD-Rs. Some have suggested that burning at a slower helps (to be honest, some of the discs that skip are so old I can't remember what speed I burned them at).

No problems to date with store bought discs.