Harmon Kardon HD-970 problem

[pkonstantinidis]

Hi,
I have had a Harman Kardon HD970 for more than 4 years now. I purchased it brand new and was quite happy with it.
Lately, the HD970 cannot play the majority of CDs that I put inside. It gives me an error "No Disc" (or something like that). It can read only 1 out of 5 CDs. That was never the problem before.
Has this problem ever appeared to other people before? Is it worth trying to fix it or should I dump the CD player? (It's not usable as it is right now).
Any suggestions for a replacement unit? How about the HD990? Or the Cambridge Azurro 640?

 

[PM650]

Tried cleaning the lense with a q-tip & alcohol?

 

[pkonstantinidis]

Yes, I did clean the lens, but no joy!

Any other possibilities?

 

[zaolo]

Any other possibilities?

... on my HD-970 (second version)
for the same problem i have substituted the laser pickup
that is a sanyo SF-HD65 and then work well.
(for the first version of HD-970 the transport is different and is the DSL-710A)
You can find this part on ebay for less than 10 euros.
Note that before install you need to remove soldered iron from new pick up
(for protection purpose).

 

[niewiem]

... on my HD-970 (second version)
for the same problem i have substituted the laser pickup
that is a sanyo SF-HD65 and then work well.
(for the first version of HD-970 the transport is different and is the DSL-710A)
You can find this part on ebay for less than 10 euros.
Note that before install you need to remove soldered iron from new pick up
(for protection purpose).

You should remove soldering iron AFTER installing 24 pin cable. Another thing: most of SF-HD65 on the market isn't sanyo just some poor quality china producs which don't do better job reading poor CDs than oryginal old sanyo laser.

 

[ignaz]

Hello, I´ve got the sameproblem with my HD 970 and i just substituted the laser unit. The only effect was that the cd spins a 15 seconds longer till the NO DISK message occours. Has anyone of you service data for the cd-unit circuit so i can find the exact error??
Thanks, Ignaz

 

[SoNic_real_one]

Did you remove the protective solder blob from laser after installing? Like the small red circled one in the attached pic (not the connector).

 

[ignaz]

Hi SoNic,
thanks for the tip but I did it just after i connected the flat cable. I guess it´s for ESD protection, right? I thought perhaps the original unit from sanyo may work better ?? Or could it be that a firmware update would fix the problem (but why when it worked before with the same firmware 4.0) ??? Ignaz

 

[SoNic_real_one]

If another laser unit will fail to work ( they are preatty cheap, I have bought a few from eBay), then maybe something else is wrong. Usually, at that point it would require some kind of scope to find out what's wrong.

 

[ignaz]

... another laserunit of higher quality made it. Now it works well. QUALITY MATTERS !!.
Can I achive any imrovements grading up the firmware of the player?? (The actual version written on a small sticker on the flash is 4.0).
Thanks so far. IGNAZ

 

[lduarte1973]

if you want upsample to 384khz/24 like the hk970 you have to buy the cambridge audio 740C or the Audiolab 8200cdq , the 640C oly does 192/24

Product - Audiolab website

Azur 740C upsampling CD player

 

[BenDJ]

I had the same problems with my HD970. "No disc" after some months. They changed the complete drive unit. Again after one year: "no disc". I bought then a Marantz CD player. Now my son (11 years) got the idea that one could replace the internal disc drive, because the cables and plugs are like in a computer. We removed the housing of an old Samsung CD drive and built it in the HD970 instead of the original CD drive. We fixed it with hot glue. No it works absolutely fine (sound, control, CD text, ...).

 

[Mooly]

That sounds a good result

Many players use off the shelf DVD/CD drives so I suppose ( and I'm certainly no expert on this) that the connectors are standard like HDD's and so on.

Well done anyway...

 

[BenDJ]

The sound is very similar to our Marantz CD6003 player. Maybe with some more heights.
It works well.

 

[armaman]

question

What type of CD-ROM (drive) is used? The exact type. It is this drive noisy?

thank you

 

[BenDJ]

It's a Samsung DVD-Master 12E Model SD-612 Ver.S December 2000. We tried also a Toshiba Samsung CD-ReWritable TS-H292 Nov. 2004, but it was not possible to start a song. Maybe the HD970 doesn't work with rewritable CD drives.
The Samsung DVD-Master is a little noisy when starting the HD970, but during playing a song it is hard to hear some noise.

 

[armaman]

Thank you very much.

 

[SoNic_real_one]

Some of the popular IDE CD/DVD drives are DSL-710A, DSL-720A. Those are low-speed drives (2X in CLV mode for CD-Audio) - they do not make noises and have lower jitter due to CLV method of reading.
Some of the Samsung drives can be updated with special firmwares to make them "low noise" by lowering the speed.

Arcam, Merdian, Linn, Naim, Apex used the DSL-710, 720 drives in their products.

 

[armaman]

These dvd drive (DSL-710A) do not work in all cd players HK HD970.
The drive used first model HK HD970.
Sorry my English is poor.

 

[SoNic_real_one]

There are different firmware revisions (I did upgrade mine). And be carefull that the IDE cable, in some players, is reversed from the PC (red stripe to the opposite of power connector). Was not the case in my player...