What's wrong with my cd 3,5?

Does wiggling the cables make any difference?

Paul Rowlands

It doesn't seem that way. The soldering / termination looks really nice in both ends.

It seems your 3.5's DAC is dying.
Power it down for 1 hour, play the piano music, if it is OK for 1 or 2 minutes and then distort, send it for repair.

Emmanuel

All opinions are my own, and reflect those of the organisation i work for, even if not stipulated.

Well, after turning it back on it didn't really do that well, but as it warmed up it did seem to get even worse. Now most music suffer from this distortion. A dying DAC? Sound terribly expensive!? And the fact that, apart from the occasional distortion, the player sounds terrific, doesn't indicate that the dac should be ok?
also: will repair be possible anywhere on the continent, f.x. Germany, or will I need to ship to England? Do you think I should have it recapped at the same time, and perhaps have the laser changed?

Erik

Naim replaced my CD3 DAC, laser, transport and caps and gave it a full service, case cleanup and added an extra transport screw for £300 so your repair may not be as expensive as you might imagine.

Jonathan

Wow, that IS expensive in my eyes. I mean a Dac is probably expensive, but I didn't expect to use that kind of money on maintainence every 5 years! I thought the 1200 £ I payed would ensure a quality product that would last longer than most other, cheaper products. Is this problem with the dac common?

sad, broke student

Erik (DK),

ship it to the German distributor. They know what they do.

Find attached the link and there address

musicline

Hermann

You're right there. My CD3 was the best part of 8-9 yrs old. It was actually the DAC that had gone and the mechanism/laser I reckon were broken in transit although I didn't have a leg to stand on as my dealer couldn't confirm they were working when he dispatched them to the factory. I imagine vast majority of that £300 was on the laser and mechanism.
DAC may not be so bad.
Jonathan

I can give you the price for a DAC change in UK or Germany, but should be under 100 UKP.

Emmanuel

All opinions are my own, and reflect those of the organisation i work for, even if not stipulated.

Thanks Herman - I've now send an email to Music-line.de. Hope they'll be able to help.

Yeah, a DAC chip isn't more than a tenner - even a really good one (off the shelf as opposed to custom designed).

Cheap (as in CHEAP - ~ £100) CD and DVD players seem to distort a bit with piano anyway - something to do with the way the DACs are implemented. I'd assume that Naim CDPs have a far better implementation though, so something's probably on the way out. Of course, it could be the analog op amps/discrete output stage circuitry on the way out...

__________________________
Make your choice, adventurous Stranger;
Strike the bell and bide the danger
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.

Now THIS is strange:
Yesterday I played a cd, after having mostly played mp3's for two weeks, and the distortion is all gone! I've been playing so much music these two days, and I feel it sounds better than ever. Probably just because I had settled with the terrible sound of mp3's, and was surprised how much better the cd-player really sounds. Isn't this very strange?
Guess it's likely that it will return. So far I'm just enjoying every minute of it.

Quote from Music-Line: 212 Euro's + shipping. How can that only include installation of one very cheap component?

Best regards
Erik

Hi Erik

A friend's CDS1 started sounding very nasty just before its transport mech died.

If your CD3 starts distorting again or dies; I'd either get it back to Naim to do a proper 'refurb' on it, or forget it.

Like 'Shayman' I also have a Naim refurbished CD3 and it's a different beast to an original model. I would expect it to sound better than most players up to around £1,000.

Bear in mind that if Naim get their hands on it; you will get all the relevant tweaks available. And with a new transport/DAC/re-cap etc: it should have a new lease of life.

It's a sad fact that good CD players get much more use that the average pile of shite that is fired up once a month.

Hence; they suffer from mechanical wear.

Good luck.

distortion / mp3

mp3 will always sound distorted with piano! That's not the fault of your CD3.5

- Jun

Jun:
The mp3s were played through my computer. No distortion noted, though. Just sounds generally bad. That may have been one of the reasons I was so happy to go back to listening to the cd-player.
- As far as I know the cd 3,5 will not play mp3s. Or? Will any Naim cd-player?

Ok, but today I did something quite drastic . A few days ago I had the puck placed a little off center, leaving it somewhere in the back of the player. Today I finally got around to disassempling the player. I thought, while I was at it and as it was quite dusty in there, I'd clean it a bit. I then went as far as taking the transport apart, dicovering some white stuff on the print. It looked like a very thin layer of old toothpaste. There was a little of it close to the motor / the transport itself, in front/middle of the board, but most of it was situated a the back of the print, around a small chip, measuring about 1*2 cm I'd guess from memory, with perhaps 5-8 legs on each side. Could this by chance be the DAC? Anyway, I decided to take off as much of the white stuff as I could manage to GENTLY scrape off with a needle. As always much care was taken to clean between the legs - all ten of them, in this case. Now, as far as I could tell the cobbercores are covered with laquer, which should, according to my humble knowledge of such things, avoid any shortcircuits caused by this white stuff. But I thought I'd take it off anyway.
BTW: While I was at it I managed to get the players vertical frontprint closer to the front cover. I toke some time, but left the display bright and clear as a cd2 (which is the only one I've compared it to). I have always been a little unsatisfied with the cheap look of that display. Now it really looks nice (and expensive).
But more importantly: when I had reassembled the player and turned it on, it instantly sounded more dynamic. Now I should note, that it has one time, since I wrote last, made the distortion for a while. It was after leaving a window wide open for hours which cooled off my electronics, that it occured for a few hours. This time, after the cleaning, even though cold, the player made no distortion. Also as said it seemed quite a lot more dynamic. There's just more of that Naim character.
It's actually a little curious. The player now sounds cheaper in one aspect and more expensive in another. Everything is clearer and preciser and has a more energetic character. On the other hand I recognize some of the "cheapish" sound of the nap92/90 combo I used to own (now I use Nait2). The bass seems a little overblown, a little Linnish maybe. But it's definitely more fun to listen to now. It didn't have a softer, more mature character before, indeed, it was just more anonymous.
I look forward very much to pluggin in that hi-cap, as soon as I get back after christmas (left the snaic at my parents ). It's probably going to have more effect now.

Best regards
Erik

The sound characteristics you've described are probably because it's not warmed up yet...

Paul Rowlands

Powl

I know how it used to sound when cold. As it warms up now, it gets better, as it did before. But the differences, as I have described them in my post above, actually still applies.

On the other hand Paul: It does seem to gain more from warming up than before. That is, it gains in more obvious areas than before. It used to be very pleasing after warmup, in a quite undefinable way. This small "operation" actually seems to have transformed this player. I now remember why I bought it 6 years ago. Its so dynamic and fluently sounding at the same time.

Could someone maybe comment on whether this form of "leakage" is normal? I wonder how many 5-6 years cd-players are out there, sounding incresingly dull, without their owners noticing.

Erik