I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my CDS-1 setup recently, especially given how wonderfully these older multi-bit players still perform. However, looking at the reality that spare parts and specialized transport mechanisms are increasingly scarce if anything major gives out, I’m hoping to tap into the collective wisdom of other olive-era CDP owners.
What proactive steps is everyone taking to keep these players healthy for the long haul?
Specifically, I’m curious about the power routine: are you keeping your CDPs and power supplies powered on 24/7 in line with traditional Naim philosophy, or are you shutting them down when not in use to preserve the laser assemblies, displays, and aging power supply caps?
Would love to hear what strategies and maintenance routines have worked best for keeping your units running strong.
I believe all you can do is keep on enjoying it till that day comes.
Try not to move it too far, as in put it in the car to take to your mates, etc.
Probably best left kept on and things tend to go bang more on cold switch on.
Other than that i don’t think much more can be done.
To me it’s like whatever vintage gears, I try to enjoy it as far as I can. For me it’s meaningless to do anything for the sake of preservation, my listening room isn’t a museum and space is limited.
In hope of not breaching the forum rules, mine went through a full service of my CDS1 by long time engineer of an ex-dealer, given no trustworthy service centre at my side. It was built in 1992 and everything is measured perfect, with Philips servo board, 70 pieces of red tants, except a Philips cap being famous for overheat died eventually, due to general high heat at my side.
After a service it was fully restored up to Naim spec, and found out the last owner did swap a non-Naim picking caps and altered the sound a bit. Now it just sounds as it should be and I really enjoy that. The Philips caps are changed to some better caps as they don’t affect the sound signature.
Without a direct comparison to my Naimed LP12 I really enjoy its sound into 52/135 and Kan MK1, earthy, meaty, tangible mids and lot of prats. It is completely levelled and I don’t hear a single peaky response even via Kan.
Keep it well take care for and you don’t need to worry’bout anything.
Other than keeping it clean and not absusing it there’s unfortunately nothing you can do. Just use it normally and leave it powered up 24/7. If you don’t do this then quite apart from anything else you’ll never be hearing it at it’s best. My CDI, CDX/XPS and CDS3/XPS2 all took at least a week to come fully on song. None of us know how long we’ve got left and your CDS is no different. Not worth worrying about - just enjoy while you can.
Hi all good topic although I must admit I no longer worry about life span etc and just enjoy
Our CDX was joined by an olive XPS last year and both are continually powered up. Maintenance limited to a monthly lens clean with an Allsop dry cleaning disc and the run through of a Densen De-magnetiser disc, had this for a long time,does it do anything…peace of mind!
The only other maintenance is a case brush down and a brush of the facia and loading tray
I rest my CD2 with swaps to the CD5X…no idea if this may prolong its life or indeed the 5X’s life. Both were serviced about five years ago so am keeping fingers x’d.
I’m wondering if I’m playing with fire literally by leaving it on 24/7 as the CDPS of CDS-1 has really beefy power supply. For now, I’m leaving it on for say an afternoon if I plan on doing some listening in the evening so I won’t leave it on unattended in case a vintage cap fails catastrophically.
The CDS’s power supply—the most massive I’ve seen in a CD player or D/A converter except for the Mark Levinson No.30—is the size and weight of many power amplifiers. The analog supply starts with a 300VA toroidal transformer with two center-tapped secondary windings. The transformer secondaries are filtered by a pair of 15,000µF capacitors and rectified by two halves of two full-wave bridges. The analog supply output is then regulated to ±24V by a pair of TO-3 3-terminal regulators (footnote 1). The analog supply rails appear on the 13-pin rear-panel jack for connection to the player. Inside the player, the ±24V supply is re-regulated to ±18V.
The digital supply also uses a huge, dual-secondary toroidal transformer, with one secondary winding supplying the transport and servos and one supplying the digital electronics. The ±24V transport/servo supply and 13V digital supply are each filtered with a pair of 15,000µF caps and regulated with TO-3 regulators. In all, the power supply has six TO-3 regulators and an astonishing 90,000µF of filter capacitance. All this regulation is merely the first stage: these regulated supply rails are re-regulated inside the player by 19 TO-220 devices.
What I would say is that if you are concerned about it from a fire safety point of view then just stop using it altogether. I personally wouldn’t have anything in my house, however good it sounded, that I believed posed any kind of safety risk. I don’t know enough about it to say whether your concerns are well founded or not, but on balance it’s a very old piece of kit so perhaps you might possibly have a point. In which case, if it were mine, I would definitely take the view of better safe than sorry and I would just stop using it. Even leaving it on for a short time could potentially be dangerous.
I suspect many or most people will dismiss your concerns. In the end nobody can guarantee to you that it won’t go up in flames when you aren’t looking so it comes down to how seriously you take the risks and how important it is to you personally to be able to continue using it. As I said if it were me and I had these concerns then I just wouldn’t use it at all because I take the view better safe than sorry. I wouldn’t want to have anything at all to do with a potentially dangerous piece of kit even for a short time. But it’s personal choice and you or others may feel differently.
