Question about Denon 3910 player

[Bubinga99]

I just got one of these units (used) and my first SACD arrived today. The SACD plays fine (it's a 2 channel rig so the player is set for 2 channel). But regular CD's don't play (I've tried several).

When I load the CD, the screen says "loading" and then a few seconds later the screen shows 0h00m00s and pushing play does nothing. Any ideas?

[ben62670]

Try and do the firmware update, and also a cleaning disk may help. My 2900 is crapping out too.

[jon s]

chances are the optical block (laser assembly is going bad...) Denon players are notorious for failing. My 3930 went in the shop twice and if it breaks again, i won't be fixing it. Their warranty period isn't exactly promising, one year. It has been a problem ever sicne they moved manufacturing to China...

[comfortablycurt]

I've been starting to get some disc read errors in my 2910 lately...

I'm not sure if it's ever had it's firmware updated. I've thought about trying one of those cleaning discs though...I've never used one before...do they really work? The CD player in my car could probably stand to be cleaned too.

[billbillw]

Denons are notoriously picky about burned discs as well. I had a whole slew of discs that wouldn't play on my 2900 until I re-burned them with different media on a different burner. BTW, that was a made in Japan unit. Regardless of where the player is assembled, the laser blocks are usually made by some other company. Usually Sony, Philips, Panasonic, or some other large company. I really don't think Denon makes any optical blocks themselves. The blocks on some seem to fail more than others. We are asking the optical blocks to do much more than they ever were made to do back in the days of strict CD players. They need to be able to read several different formats of disc with different structure types and often multiple layers. You'd think that a plain CD would be easiest to read, but for whatever reason, it always seems to be CDs that fail first. That's also what happened to my first Pioneer DVD player way back when. At the time, I was using it for CD and DVD playback because it supposedly had superior DACs to my other player.

Anyway, its just a sad fact that these things just don't last anymore.

[tcrossma]

You could try popping the top off and uncovering the laser assembly and giving the lense a bit of a cleaning with some alcohol.

[Bubinga99]

You could try popping the top off and uncovering the laser assembly and giving the lense a bit of a cleaning with some alcohol.

I've never opened one so I'm not sure how difficult it is to get at it. Would that work better than something like this:
http://www.amazon.com/Allsop-23321-Carbon-Edge-CD-Drive-Cleaner/dp/B00000J1QM/ref=pd_sim_e_2

PS how much does it cost to get the optical pickup repaired/replaced? (probably more than I just paid for it off eBay ;o( )

[polkatese]

My Denon DVD 3800 was supposed to be pretty high in the totem pole off their scale. It sounds and look great for the first two years, then it was possessed. The drawer started to randomly go in and out by itself. And yes, it was finicky and refused to play certain CDs and DVDs. That was the last time I would buy a Denon. It's a shame since it's a very nice player when it worked.

[skrol]

There may still be hope!

I had the same problem with my 2910. It got to the point that there were very few disks that it would read. I tried using one of those CD player cleaning disks, but no joy. I figured that the optical block was bad and would need to be replaced.

Having nothing to loose I took the cover off the unit. Then I took the cover off the drive mechanism and, very very gently, with a silk lens cloth (for camera lenses) wiped the optical lens. I put almost no pressure on the lens. Then I gently used some compressed air to do a final dusting and reassembled the unit.

It now reads anything!

My theory is that it is not dust but a residue buildup from components out-gassing. At NASA we go through great pains to bake-out the electronics to prevent contamination of optics on science instruments.

I would try this only as a last resort. The laser pickups tend to be very ESD sensitive. Also, do not use chemicals.

Stan