Have your say & ask the experts

esky:

If someone is having loading problems and have spent over 1000 pounds, in my case 3000 dollars on a cd player, then I dont see the problem.

chebby:

Can't this thread be amalgamated into the other Cyrus SE 'loading problems' thread that is running concurrently?....

http://whathifi.com/forums/t/113080.aspx

Trouble is, if we merge the threads the posts all appear in chronological order, so we'll end up with a jumble of all three threads and it won't read through

esky:

The problem is Cyrus seems to be saying only a few players are at fault if everone who was and was not having problems could leave a short post here simply as a survey of the site users who have a cd8se so a percentage of the site users cd8se at fault could be determined.

Good idea. I'm going to take the CD8SE home tonight and feed it a diet of my own CD-Rs to see which do/don't play. I'll report back here tomorrow with the results.

OK, thought I'd report back with some early findings. I brought the Cyrus CD 6 SE home this evening (the 8 SE is currently being given a thorough testing by our Tech Ed in the hi-fi test room at work, and he wants to run it for a full week for his own analysis).

So far I've tested the 6 SE with 31 discs (mainly CD-Rs) and have had four Disc Errors when the disc wouldn't load first time. However, all four discs did play the second time I loaded them. I've been testing with a mix of Maxell and TDK CD-Rs, both 74 min and 80 min versions, all recordings made initially on my Philips CDR 950 CD recorder.

I'll carry on testing more discs in the morning and let you know how I get on.

To save time in checking discs, what I did was when I found a disc that would not play I put my finger in the center hole and if you then put another disc on your finger next to it you can see if it is larger or smaller, really easily. When I find a larger disc I try it in the player (CD 8SE) and so far the larger ones never worked. Up to now I have found around 80 discs, which is about 5 percent of the ones I tried on the player, which either have trouble to load or don't load at all (around half of them). I also found some cdr's which would not load at all. It is not a brand you can probably check as I am in Aus and the discs are Strathfields, as shop over here. Anyway the proof that it is a size probem is that I had a bunch of these discs that would not load, so as they were only copies and I was not so bothered to loose them, I scraped the edge of some of them to reduce the size a little bit. The "reduced size" ones loaded and played with no problems, while the "uncsraped ones" still did not load.

I understand that when a disc does not load the first time is because the disc is quite large and is catching on something internal, but when the eject button is pressed and pressed again to reload the cd, the machine relines up the disc, and if you are lucky it clears the problem and loads. Do you have any discs you know to be over 120mm? You might find that the few problems that you had up to now are due to slightly larger disks.

Right, been up since the early hours of this morning finishing my test on the Cyrus CD 6 SE. Over the last 24hrs I've played 100 discs on the Cyrus: a mix of pre-recorded, shop-bought ones, and my own recordings on CD-R and CD-RW, made on a Philips CDR 950 CD recorder. I've used a mix of recordable CDs from TDK and Maxell, with running times of 74mins and 80mins.

Here are the results: all the pre-recorded discs played first time, with no errors. However, of the CD-R discs I tried, eight failed to load and play first time and a Disc Error message was shown on the Cyrus's display. Of those eight, six played on the second attempt to load after I'd ejected the disc and re-inserted it. Two of them took three or four attempts before they'd load and play.

I then loaded all eight 'problem' discs into my reference Naim CD5i CD player in the same system and they all loaded and played first time, with no problems whatsoever. Details of the discs that didn't play on the Cyrus first time are as follows:

1) David Gray's Lost Songs

Recorded on TDK CDR-XG (74mins)

2) David Gray: A Century Ends

Maxell CD-R (74mins)

3) Eels: Souljacker

Maxell CD-R (80mins)

4) Tracy Chapman: Let It Rain

TDK CDR-XG (80mins)

5) Bax Symphonies Nos. 5 + 6

TDK CDR-XG (80 mins)

Failed to load three times, worked on fourth attempt

6) Prince: Diamond & Pearls

Maxell CD-R XL-II (74mins)

7) Morcheeba: Charango

TDK CDR-XG (80mins)

Failed to load twice, played on third attempt.

8) The Sopranos: Peppers & Eggs

TDK CDR-XG (74mins)

For the record, a Philips CD-RW (re-writable) recording of Fauré's Requiem played first time in the Cyrus and Naim, no problem. So overall that's a first-play failure rate of 8 per cent on the Cyrus player.

Still no problems with mine, but then I don't have many CD-Rs (am I the only person who buys their own CDs?).

Andy Clough:

Right, been up since the early hours of this morning finishing my test on the Cyrus CD 6 SE.

Ah, but did you have the vernier calipers out?