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I purchased a Cary CD 306 SACD player at the end of August of 2006. As I began to purchase more SACD's, I began to experience the playback problems mentioned by other 306 SACD owners: "no disc" errors, skipping, and the player not reading the SACD layer of hybrid discs. I sent an email to Cary describing the problems and they asked me to return the unit for service. I returned the unit on 9/20/06 and received it back on 12/20/06. Immediately upon putting the repaired unit in play, I noticed a substantial improvement in sound, plus the unit did not run hot as it did before. It now gets barely warm to the touch. [Also, read about similar results in a post from member "taoh2" on October 02, 2006.]On the morning of 11/27/06, I sent an email to Cary asking about the status of my CD 306 SACD repair. The following is an excerpt from an email I received on the afternoon of 11/27/06 from Dennis Had, president of Cary Audio:
"Greetings. I hope all is well with you today. In regards to your CD-306/SACD player, we are having your unit up-dated with a new servo board and new software along with a new Sony chip set that operates at the specified ratings. We have just under 500 of the CD 306/SACD players out in the field. We have had problems with approximately 70 units. Since we are a licensed Sony SACD manufacturer, we had the Sony engineers in Japan correct the chip problem along with a software update. The chips manufactured by Sony were spec’d at 85 degrees C. We find that a number of these chips will not function beyond 50 degrees C. Dealing with Sony has been ever so frustrating. We ended up waiting over 2 months for parts that should have taken a couple of weeks. Your machine is at our assembly factory in Hong Kong. I anticipate about 2 more weeks and we should have your player ready to ship. As a side note: as we go back into production with the updated CD 306/SACD players, they will have a price of $7500.
I appreciate your patience and understanding.
Talk to you soon and have a great evening ..............
Dennis"
So, there you have it. While I was bitterly disappointed at having my expensive toy in the shop for an extended period (3 months), I felt that the $1500 in performance upgrades was just compensation.
Follow Ups:
Thank you for your post. I have a Cary CD-306 as well but my problems have been a little bit different to yours. The most serious irritation with my machine is a tendency to "eat" discs - press the eject button and an empty tray comes out, with the CD still inside the player! Thankfully this has happened only a couple of times and I have been able to retrieve the disc by sticking a wire into the slot.My dealer has mentioned that Cary will offer an upgrade for a price. He was unable to tell me whether it would sound better because he hadn't had a chance to compare the old vs. the new CDP. Your post is certainly intriguing and makes me think I will probably get the upgrade done myself!
You should send your player back to Cary to get the disk tray problem fixed. It could be just a simple misalignment issue, or it could be a problem with the loading mechanism software.The CD 306 is too expensive a machine to have to live with disks not ejecting properly, however infrequently.
Thanks for the update. CARY has had mine since 10/2/2006 and I'm still waiting. Any week now is what I'm told. I don't have a back-up player (using a DVD player - ouch) and the wait is killing me.
I had my trusty old Adcom GCD-750 to fall back on.:)
Hi,I had three units replaced, purchased two more new and all had problems. My last one was October 2006.
Door staying closed, static and popping, one channel only at times on SACD, would not read discs, lockup until unplugged, not ejecting the disc, switching from cd to SACD had to un-plug before it would read SACD, cut of last track on any cd over 25 tracks.
I will never buy a Cary digital unit again at any price this is very poor design and quality control at $6,000 soon I hear to go to $7,500 is nuts to even consider it.
Stereophile held off a review until a new board was put in, my also had a new board put in and was the newest design, still had problems.
Consider I have had CD players that cost $200 and DVD players in the same price range and none have given me the many problems as this $6,000 unit did, in fact zero problems.
I would tell everyone to think twice about this unit, it does sound very good when it works, but you can expect to have problems and if they do decided to raise the price then I would not even consider this unit.
Buy wise, buy smart, this is a dog of a design.
Not bashing Cary, just this unit, and I not the only one who have had the above problems, many, and many have.
I am back to buying major manufactures again, My new Marantz SA7-S1 should be arriving shortly and I will have the piece of mind knowing when I turn it on it will work.
Mr. B
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