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I only asked because of a recent post Sept 24, 2009 on Audiogon forum:

75.156.98.13

In Reply to: RE: Recent Rega Saturn CD Player purchasers - any problems with the unit? posted by Sboez on October 11, 2009 at 22:11:51

Rega Saturn. Is it really a giant killer?

09-24-09: Timoteo
One problem I ran into with the home-trial Saturn I had over a weekend was that it seemed to demand pristine disks.

Some of my CDs have a few scratches on them, but generally nothing serious. The Saturn got very upset over a couple of my CDs. I took them out, looked them over, and really couldn't find anything obviously wrong with them. I listened to a lot of different brands of players at the local audio store and this is the first one that got upset with some of the CDs I like to use for testing players.

One CD started skipping a bit - barely noticeable at first - kind of like a skipped heartbeat - but then it started getting stuck and skipping in some places, and in one place it decided it had had enough and simply froze - it stopped advancing the time and muted itself. I had to skip to the next track. I put the same CD in my own player and it played fine. I had this same problem with an Apollo they had at the store too. I'm pretty sure they both use the same transport, so that shouldn't be too surprising.

If you get to home-trial the Saturn, play a lot of CDs to make sure it tracks them well before you plop down $2500.

Follow Ups:

RE: I only asked because of a recent post Sept 24, 2009 on Audiogon forum: - coolhand 21:53:46 10/13/09 (0)
A giant killer ?
As far as I'm concerned, this machine is not a killer of anything..... quite the opposite, it is a lover, and a music lovers lover of music... all these hyped up hyperventilating ultra engineered masterpieces of transport finesse, up & oversampling excess, Hi-Fi Brow prowess...Pah !!

Where the f*ck did the music go in the process...?

It sounded great out of the box, even better after a few tweaks and customer support was more than decent, the company has a philosophy and an aesthetic which I can ascribe to which counts for something in my book...

The only part which really might eventually wear in it, the transport, is dirt cheap to replace and plentiful... plays ALL my discs thus far regardless of apparent and obvious scratches, oh yeah did I say that it 'out loved' the music more than the Ayre CX-5e, Nagra CDP, EMM Labs, AA Prestige, Cambridge 840 and several others who stepped in the arena already ? :-))

Others mileage WILL vary, and boy oh boy was Douggie S haulin' some heavy Karma on his run (!!) ...in the end it's all meaningless if you aren't plain enjoyin' nuthin' but the music...
The players that I have tested here can play this disc... - KT88 20:04:57 10/13/09 (11)
Not only is it completely trashed (the photo doesn't really even do it's ratty condition justice) but it isn't even a CD. It's a CD-R and it has no less than 143 mp3 files on it. I have tried it in both a demo Apollo and a Saturn here and not only does it play in both units but the players counted and indexed each track and when I pushed play, the CD Text function allowed the title of the first track to scroll across the players displays. I have not seen a tougher optical disc to use as a read test for any CD player. I actually found this disc on the sidewalk in front of my home one day and to say it's scratched is quite an understatement.
-Bill
- A bogus test for a CD player - Tony Lauck 20:39:39 10/13/09 (8)
  "It's a CD-R and it has no less than 143 mp3 files on it"
  
  This is a bogus test for a CD player. It might be appropriate for a drive used in a computer.
  
  MP3s are not stored on disk in the same format as CD audio. Data CDROMs have an extra level of error correction. Therefore, data disks are substantially more reliable than CDs. When a drive encounters a bad data disk it slows down its read rate drastically to accommodate the complex error correction required to recover data. However, MP3s are already compressed down to a low data rate. So it is entirely possible to play MP3s in real time on disks that are horribly damaged, although similar damage with a CD audio disk would result in something completely unplayable. This is more about the data format than the player.
  
  Tony Lauck
  
  "Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
  - RE: A bogus test for a CD player - KT88 20:57:19 10/13/09 (7)
    I'm not so sure about that. It is an optical medium and no matter what is on the disc (we know it is a series of pits and lands, ie ones and zeros), the info has to be able to be read optically. The scratches block (by refraction) the reception of the lasers light. I see DVD ROM drives that have problems reading dics with fewer scratches and they should have more memory available. I should have a sacrificial CD around somewhere that I can bring to levels of horrible condition until it refuses to be read in order to test that theory of yours. It involves a little luck no matter how you slice it (pardon the pun) as you can occasionally find the tiniest of scratches in the wrong spot on some discs which will cause every player that you put it into to refuse to read that portion. I have a couple of those discs and no player will read those areas consistently.
    -Bill
    - RE: A bogus test for a CD player - Tony Lauck 21:44:45 10/13/09 (6)
      I worked for a computer manufacturer that developed optical disk technology and helped to standardize the CD-ROM format, so I am familiar with the technology and its limitations. In addition, I have practical experience with mastering audio CDs and a few "enchanced" CDs that included computer data as well as audio tracks. As it happens, one of these enhanced CDs had production difficulties and so I got to be all too familiar with all of the various limitations of the CD audio and CD data formats, and how problems can involve complex interactions between disks and players.
      
      The nature of digital data storage is that it is designed to preserve data in spite of many errors. This is an illusion. It appears that one's data is perfect when it is on the very edge. One slight additional degradation and it's over the cliff... This property makes it very difficult to design and conduct valid experiments to test data reliability. I would say that doing this properly is almost impossible without in depth knowledge of the technology and/or without specialized test equipment.
      
      Tony Lauck
      
      "Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
      - A valid test for a CD player - KT88 06:19:04 10/14/09 (5)
        
        In Reply to: RE: A bogus test for a CD player posted by Tony Lauck on October 13, 2009 at 21:44:45
        
        So are you saying that even a CD if badly damaged and which plays in the player does nothing to show that the player will play badly damaged discs? I do understand that your are distinguishing mp3 files from CD tracks. I also understand that it is hard to say when a disc will or will not play by looking at it. My only concern however is addressing the assertion that because one player will not play one disc does not mean that the lot of the players will not play any damaged disc, which I believe to be a huge assumption and a disservice to anyone interested in a good player. The assertion was made that a barely scratched disc had trouble being read in one player and so the argument there is that "then how can you expect discs with more damage to play". I feel that I can disprove that argument easily by playing a more damaged disk as the assertion does not address any technical argument, rather it is only a logical argument. That in itself is of course illogical ;-). So I feel justified in disproving the poor logic there. We will have to leave the technical fact that not every disc despite of its appearance will play in every player, regardless of manufacture, on the table. That's just not going to be disproved and I am not trying to do so. So I understand your point there, but you might also understand mine.
        -Bill
        
        RE: A valid test for a CD player - Tony Lauck 07:30:12 10/14/09 (4)
        
        In Reply to: RE: A valid test for a CD player posted by KT88 on October 14, 2009 at 06:19:04
        
        I would summarize the situation as follows. If you want to understand the QC issues related to disks and disk drives, then specialized knowledge and specialized tools are required. If you have audio on CDs that you don't want to lose then you must treat the disks with the greatest care. In addition, without backup copies you are still at risk.
        
        There is no way to intuitively understand issues related to the quality of data recorded on a disk or the performance of a disk drive in dealing with data errors. In particular, that fact that a disk plays well on a variety of players today does not mean that it won't suddenly deteriorate overnight. Similarly, the fact that a drive can play a bunch of damaged disks well does not mean that it will continue to do so, nor that it will play other damaged disks. This area is best treated as a "logic free zone".
        
        When I get a CD I rip it to my computer system using software that takes special care to get it right. It turns out that there are no problems with perhaps 95% of disks, but lately I've come across some old CDs that can't be read even though they have no scratches. This is the case on three separate computers, each with its own drive. Unfortunately, this music is lost for me, because I never made a copy. Most of the bad disks that I get come from disks that I am ripping for an Internet download service. When I get one that doesn't read properly it is usually because of scratches. About half the time these bad disks can be read on one of my three drives without any errors. At this point it is possible to burn a good CD-R copy. The drive that seems to do the best job on bad disks is old and slow. Perhaps it works well because it has seen very little use over its 10 year lifetime.
        
        I don't like the idea of being captive to a CDP manufacturer for a working drive. I've been that route and had to junk an expensive player because of a defective laser that was uneconomical to repair. Drives wear out. The last time this happened on my audio PC it took me less than 15 minutes to install a new CD/DVD reader/burner which cost me less than $40.
        
        Tony Lauck
        
        "Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
        
        RE: A valid test for a CD player - Dave Pogue 16:48:33 10/14/09 (2)
        
        In Reply to: RE: A valid test for a CD player posted by Tony Lauck on October 14, 2009 at 07:30:12
        
        I must be lucky but I've never had a CD fail, nor a CDR that I've made. And I've made many hundreds. I can't account for the problems people have with CDs (though I remember a Conrad Johnson transport/DAC combo back in the 90s that wouldn't play maybe 5% of my CDs; fortunately that's long gone). In the case of CDRs, though, I'm convinced that burning them at the slowest possible speed -- mine, via a Tascam CD recorder, are all at 1X -- is a good thing vrom a reliability/longevity perspective. I HAVE had CDRs that were made by others on their computers become coasters, but then I've never involved computers in the burning process myself.
        
        RE: A valid test for a CD player - Tony Lauck 09:23:28 10/15/09 (1)
        
        In Reply to: RE: A valid test for a CD player posted by Dave Pogue on October 14, 2009 at 16:48:33
        
        I have yet to have a problem with a CD-R that I burned, including one that fell out of its jewel case and landed face down on a dirt road. Most of the problems that I've had were with CD-Rs burned by others (probably at high speed) and with pressed CDs that have been "pooched" by repeated mishandling. Recently, however, some unscratched CD's that I bought back in the 80's and early 90's have gone bad, including several titles in the "Compact Jazz" series. Probably some kind of rot. Is this the beginning of the end?
        
        Please note that some of these CDs that have gone "bad" still play with no obvious audible degradation. The RBCD "error concealment" has simply interpolated the bad data and if there is not a lot of high frequency content or if the fault persists for a short period it is hard to notice the interpolation. One of my bad CDs would not rip without error correction turned off and then it had lots of pops and cracks. It sounded bad on my CDP in my car as well.
        
        You are obviously taking good care of your CDs. Keep doing so and hopefully you won't have many problems. And definitely continue to burn CD-Rs at the best speed for the media and equipment. More important, back up any of these unreliable media before something goes wrong, rather than just placing blind trust in the technology.
        
        Tony Lauck
        
        "Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
        
        RE: A valid test for a CD player - Dave Pogue 10:22:29 10/15/09 (0)
        
        In Reply to: RE: A valid test for a CD player posted by Tony Lauck on October 15, 2009 at 09:23:28
        
        I do keep waiting for one particular CDR to fail (and have backed it up just in case). I have no idea where I got it and it has no markings of any kind. Thing is, it's so transparent you can read a newspaper through it! But it soldiers on, so far at least.
        
        validity - KT88 08:29:54 10/14/09 (0)
        
        In Reply to: RE: A valid test for a CD player posted by Tony Lauck on October 14, 2009 at 07:30:12
        
        "There is no way to intuitively understand issues related to the quality of data recorded on a disk or the performance of a disk drive in dealing with data errors. In particular, that fact that a disk plays well on a variety of players today does not mean that it won't suddenly deteriorate overnight. Similarly, the fact that a drive can play a bunch of damaged disks well does not mean that it will continue to do so, nor that it will play other damaged disks. This area is best treated as a "logic free zone"."
        
        This is what I was getting at and I agree with that assessment. I am simply suggesting that since it is a logical error, that I could illustrate that. I understand from your perspective though how disproving poor logic does not satisfy the physics of the situation. The problem that I see posed is not that of a physical nature but of a logical one as there seems to be a debate of what might happen rather than of what is possible. I appreciate your insight.
        -Bill
- RE: The players that I have tested here can play this disc... - Sboez 20:25:49 10/13/09 (1)
  Curiously, why would my player malfunction on clean and perfect disks?
  - RE: The players that I have tested here can play this disc... - KT88 20:48:45 10/13/09 (0)
    Perhaps the pickup assembly is damaged? That's usually the case. Why not just send it to Rega for service if you think it's not reading discs as it should? Obviously from my disc example, it is not a design issue.
    -Bill

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