[quite OT] vintage CD player oddity

boo07

Member
Hi folks!
Recently I got an old Dual CD20, a CD player made in the mid 80s (1986 I suppose). Not what I'd call "a well built machine", lots of plastic, but I was intrigued by listening a "vintage" player. It uses a Sony KSS-121A pickup and the famous Sony CX20017 linear DAC (no oversampling). Well, I have to say it's not that bad. I think it has a quite pleasing sound, not extremely detailed, but quite natural.
The problem is: it doesn't play Sony DADC-mastered CDs at all. With Universal, EMI, etc it plays without problems (except for copy-protected CDs, CD-EXTRA and CD-R, but I think this is quite normal for such an old unit), but Sony discs (made in Austria) don't play at all. It keeps spinning forever. Now, I know it's an old unit, maybe the laser isn't in best condition, but... why only THAT type of discs? I've absolutely no idea of what's happening, and it's quite strange.
The mystery is going on. Any idea? :)
Thanks a lot, greetings from Italy

Lorenzo
 
It's hard to say what is the cause. Perhaps you could clean the laser lens, and see if that fixes the problem.
 
Could CD-Text encoding be part of the problem? I noticed that old Sony pressings (before cd-text era) play without problems.
 
My main CD Player is a Yamaha CD-2 that I bought in 1986.

Some of the newer CDs are not compatible with the unit due to disc capacity (usually a problem with greatest hits compilations) and some due to encoding.
 
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