My hdx cd drive decided not to play any cdi have. I tried to RIP them, and that seems to work, and i usually abort ripping, add i don’t want to rip them.
My background is a medical laser field service engineer and i understand lasers and can do electronic repair.
I know that usually the laser loses its power and toy can up the power to the laser head to get a little more life out, but this didn’t work.
The drive in my hdx is a teac drive.
When you do a search that model is listed as a dvd drive.
I have spare cd dvd writer drives, but i tried 1 and it wouldn’t read, I’d imagine due to having drivers that control the drive.
I don’t want to send this in again, as a year earlier the power supply took a dive and i already paid enough to get that replaced. Unfortunately i didn’t use the cd player at all other then burning a few discs after that and now this.
What are my best options?
Buy the same drive model used or refurbished or possibly find old stock somewhere?
Can i install another drive? What about instructions to install drivers for it?
Or, just send it in and pay several hundred to have a service center do it?
I found a teac dv-156gb-000 and dv-156gb-002.
I would expect the 002 model should plug and play.
Any advice would be great.
If I understand correctly you can rip cds but not play them? Are you sure that the HDX is set to play mode and not rip mode? Go into “system settings” and you will see “rip or play mode”. This can also be changed on the app as well.
One other thing, just a friendly reminder. This forum does not allow members to post about modifications or self repairs to equipment. So be careful as the post could be removed. Good luck.
Maybe @ChrisSU could help. But I doubt it’s possible to change the hard drive without sending it to Naim.
Sorry, I’ve never had a drive failure so I couldn’t say for sure. I have a vague feeling that I read something a while back about replacement drives needing to be flashed with a software modification in order to work, but best to ask Naim support to confirm.
It’s the cd drive, not the hard drive.
If the drive is ripping ok, that would suggest it is healthy.
Always reboot the HDX after changing between play/rip (due to a bug).
Also, with the latest build 1.7* the unit will not play discs unless the unit is connected to a network.
If you have been making hardware changes, it’s a good idea to restore Naim Defaults in the BIOS.
Regards
Neil.
Ah ok, so it’s easier. I think to remember it’s a Teac mechanism and it’s possible to change it. Maybe by a dealer ?
I dont believe a cd drive has its own software within a chip on the drive itself and the hdx software carries the drivers and controls and allows the drive to work. That’s why i think a standard teac of the same model would work. Only trouble is what happens when there are none available? I’m assuming drivers for other models and brands would have to be loaded.
So you mean to tell me that when the hdx was updated to the latest firmware that they made it so that it will no longer play a cd until it’s hooked up to a network? I never had an issue before, but i did have internet then
Can anyone else confirm this?
I don’t understand why you wouldn’t be able to listen to music either way.
Also, If this was the case then why does it RIP the cd?
When ripping, the lookup will roll back to its internal database if there is no internet connection, but this isn’t the case with playback.
I’m afraid I can’t answer why this was introduced. I will see if I can find out.
Regards
Neil.
The drive is like super old though. Not even sata. I feel like I have one knocking about somewhere
I’ve done some digging, it is not by design & is indeed a bug in the later build revisions.
Network connection is required for playback mode until such time a future update is released. 
Regards
Neil.
I actually looked at the wrong date. It’s a 2008. The other date i believe was a date for certification. Either way, 2008 is 15 years.
NAIM used several OEM DVD/RW manufacturers for the HDX. Teac was one of them. I’ve never been able to get a straight answer out of NAIM or its service centers as to whether NAIM flash their own firmware onto these optical drives to permit “bit perfect” ripping (ie bypassing the drive’s own error correction algorithms), so I don’t know if you can substitute the OEM drive with any aftermarket drive. The replacements drives from NAIM are all SATA with a SATA to PATA adapater board hot glued onto the back.
Maybe NeilS can finally get us an answer, as NAIM have EOL’d the HDX and we’re somewhat on our own with this now.
What’s sad is that if they decide not to support these anymore, and a basic cd drive goes, and there is some software on the drive itself, then we end up with a very expensive piece of junk.
As far as I’m aware all Naim ripper/servers are still serviceable by Naim. This discussion only arose because the OP wanted to do it himself.
Yes, just to clarify, NAIM will provide some level of service (replacement 2TB HDD, SATA Optical Disk Drive) until further notice. I don’t believe SLC SSDs are available any longer so I don’t know what would happen if one of those had a problem or if a board got fried. The HDX is EOL (discontinued) so there will be no further updates of software (firmware) and I believe the 1.7c firmware was beta (hence not released for general consumption).
This is not quite correct. Naim have said that they will issue further firmware updates to the legacy servers if they become necessary. 1.7c was released as a RC beta for beta testing and then was publicly released with no change except for the removal of the “RC” tag. Because these days fewer people have the means to burn a CD from an image, Naim burned some CDs themselves, initially copies of the RC and later of the release firmware, to give to customers and didn’t bother to recall or replace those RC CDs. But the current 1.7c release is not a beta, albeit that it’s the same as the RC beta.
Naim said they decided not to release the firmware in the normal way, so they could keep track of its use and make sure any problems people ran into in doing the update were sorted. So you have to get it from Naim, although you can also download the image from the German distributor’s website if you want to.