Audio Dropping Out on Rega Apollo and Saturn

I am a recent owner of a Rega Saturn and have experienced only one of the problems mentioned. However, I was able to correct the problem very quickly. Let me explain:

If your home, like ours, is filled with numerous IR and WI-FI signals, resulting from wireless phones operating on 5.3MH, wireless computer routers, remote controlled ceiling fans, wireless keyboards, mice, X-Box 360s, etc., then it's no wonder some of these Rega's are going haywire. Think about the electromagnetic cross channeling that must be taking place inside ones household.

In my case it was the remote controlled ceiling fan being in close proximity to the Saturn. Evidentially, the signal, while small, was being constantly emitted so when I pushed a certain buttons on my Solar remote that function became interrupted.

I ended up having to disable the ceiling fans' remote function and all has been well with the Saturn ever since. I guess my point is, before you fault the operation of the player, do a quick IR and WI-FI check of your house, especially if these systems are close to your players.

Perhaps your problem is not that simple, but it may just be. If anything it is a good place to start.

I hope this helps.

WPM

I dont have any wifi or infrared device of any kind in my house. I dont even have a cell phone. For awhile I sometimes thought the unplugging suggestion made the problem go away, only to always have it return. Please let us know by email or posting if you experience the same malfunction despite having taken the ceiling fan out.

At the suggestion of Fillmoor above, I will definitely post any problems that (hopefully do not) occur with my Saturn.

I totally agree with his comment that no player costing $2.5K should exhibit even the slightest problem. So, I will be keeping my fingers crossed for the next few months.

For the record I, too, previously owned (and recently sold) a Jupiter 2000, and it never gave me a lick of trouble.

WPM

I still find it somewhat suspect that people are jumping to the conclusion that these players are unreliable and prone to breakdowns. I'm sure if we look at any manufacturers stats regarding their products we'd be hard pressed to find anyone with a 100% reliability score. Even carmakers such as Toyota (Lexus) and Honda (Acura) have vehicles that are lemons! I've experienced it first hand, but does that mean their whole lot is garbage?

I have not experienced any of the aforementioned problems with my Rega, and I've skipped tracks, but for the most part I play whole discs. So I guess you can add me to the "lucky" group?

Darrens, Absolutely there are plenty of people with these machines who report zero problems- as the reply from the Rega distributer may indicate. However I had 3 Apollo machines and a Saturn machine over a nearly 2 year period and every single one exhibited various combinations of the issues above. That is my own personal experience, so I am not jumping to conclusions. It has been suggested by a Rega dealer over on audioasylum that my problems and that of doug shroeder (who had 5 machines and none worked correctly) are related to RFI, and goes on to say that it is essentially just 2 guys that have problems with these machines. That theory does not hold water for me because my 3rd Apollo and my Saturn worked largely without incidnet for several months, and then started bugging out. Additionally doug shroeder had a malfucntion at an entirely different location when he took his machine to his dealer. Further I have knowledge of 3 other users that had errors on more than one Apollo machine. In total my count stands at 20 faulty machines among 8 different users. These errors include all of the known software bug issues on some of the machines, and the drop out/skip problem on others. The drop out issue is probably due to an explanation listed above. The machine sets itself to one of 3 error correction levels during initialization, and there are instances where it chooses a lower level of error correction for slightly scratched/marred discs which proves to be inadequate and causes the audio drop outs, or the "acoustic feedback" skips mentioned by a dealer above. I myself did not have drop outs, but 2 other posters above did. Other than disc initialiaztion failures and the drop out thing, most other problems are related to track access via the remote and the failure to respond to stop function and these will not be experienced by users who play entire discs. Initialization failures are in the range of about one of every 15 or 20 discs.