Do I Need a New Transport?

mlucitt

mlucitt

Veteran and General Yakker
Joined
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Jacksonville, FL
I have a Carver SD/A-490t CD Player circa 1991. It will play a CD flawlessly but chokes on a CD-R or CD-RW. Can this be corrected with a new transport or is this a design limitation?
 
Probably a design limitation. Does it have a proper swing arm transport?
 
Reflectivity of CDr and CDrw is less than factory stamped discs. A common issue with older players, changing the transport with a different one with similar specifications probably won’t help.
 
Older (good) players are CD- specific!

They don’t recognize the CDR but MAY recognize the CDR-Music discs (remember those?)

They will never play a DVD either. The newer players that do, have a twin laser computer drive.

They won’t recognize MP3 files on any format either.
 
J!m said:
Older (good) players are CD- specific!

They don’t recognize the CDR but MAY recognize the CDR-Music discs (remember those?)

They will never play a DVD either. The newer players that do, have a twin laser computer drive.

They won’t recognize MP3 files on any format either.
Click to expand...
Older in- dash car CD players are extremely picky as well. Newer ones that recognize .mp3 files are more flexible in what they’ll play, more willing to play the lower reflectivity AZO dye discs.
 
Wonder if it has the protection circuitry/scheme that keeps my Sony from playing anything but Red Book CD or a legit SACD?
 
Honestly “horses for courses” applies.

A good quality CD-only transport trumps a newer, fancy, play-anything player when it comes to CD playback. Particularly the Philips CDM-1 through CDM-9 swing arm transports.
 
J!m said:
They don’t recognize the CDR but MAY recognize the CDR-Music discs (remember those?)
Click to expand...
The Carver SD/A-490t will play a CDR-Music disc, but not a CD-R disc. What is the difference? Here is a picture of the transport. Is a Transport transplant a thing?
Carver SDA-490t Transport.jpg
 
The chances of finding an alternate transport that will work with the firmware in the unit are slim.

I can’t tell the transport type. Usually the support chips are similar brand such as Sony Pioneer or Philips.
 
From what I read somewhere a long time ago is that part of the price of purchasing the “music” variety of recordable discs went to a slush fund to partially compensate music artists for the rampant duplication of their copyrighted material.

There may also be subtle differences in the reflectivity of the aluminum and formulation of the dye for the sake of compatibility with the players.

How much of this is true I can’t say for certain…
 
There is something pre-embedded in the disc.

I had a Philips burner and it would only function with CDR-music discs. Other discs, even the same branded ones, would not be recognized.
 
From the big list of players I just posted:

PHILIPS TK699 player has a TCD201R laser in it. is the "R" variant compatible with the "B" variant above? No idea, but if you can find a Philips TK699 cheap, it may be worth finding out.
 
I’ve seen YT vids of people making cigarette lighters from CD lasers,
but I think you need a “burner” laser instead of a “reader” laser…
 
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