Denon DVD5900 --- Label Incompatability?

[suburbanDK]

Denon 5900 reading/playing woes

I've read this thread with great interest, our 5900 is back at Denon for the 2nd time for not being able to play a Mercury Living Presence SACD (Starker/Back Cello Suites) in MultiCH. We received a replacement from Tower, assuming it was the disc. All other discs (8 Living Stereo MultiCH and 1 Hamonia Mundi MultiCH) play without a problem.
Our dealers unit (which we've had for the last 4 months) plays the MLP disc without a hitch. It MAY be that the 1st time the unit went in, Denon only enabled firewire (we asked that this ALSO be done). Dealer was going to talk to the local rep also; don't know what transpired there.

Let you know how this goes. I will note that a thread on Audio Asylum talks about laser power supply issues potentially causing this, I mentioned this to our dealer to potentially pass on to Denon; here's the link:

http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=hirez&n=182107&highlight=denon+5900+problem+sacd&r=&session=

Dr Dave

 

[marty]

The fix is in...

I'm not sure if Denon is keeping this a secret, but after a month I've not seen anything on their website about it but there is a fix for this problem. It requires sending the unit to Denon in NJ (at least that's why I did) and installation of firmware and perhaps a new drive mechanism.

I've read that some 2900 owners are having this problem too, so if you own a 5900 or 2900 and are having a problem playing multichannel SACDs, contact Denon's service department and ask them about a fix.

In my case the turnaround was about two weeks, which is not bad. My 5900 now plays everything I throw at it.

 

[suburbanDK]

Ours is working perfectly as well!

Invoice says Denon replaced the laser pickup and updated firmware; ALL SACDs we have play perfectly, even in Multi-Channel, which it hadn't for our Mercury Living Presence discs (Starker/Bach Cello Suites & Stravinsky Firebird). Spent many enjoyable hours testing and listening to excerpts from the 20 Living Stereos, 2 Harmonia Mundis, 2 Cheskys, and the 3 Death Discs (MLPs). All after 24 hours warm-up; warm-up exacerbated the problem previously. Loading time's improved too.

Kudos plus to our local dealer, who even went out and bought one of the MLP MCH discs (Chabrier & Roussel) and sent it to Denon for testing (AND gave us this disc when we got the unit back). A definite vote for our friends in bricks-and-mortar.

Maybe it's just the joy of resolution ;-) but we both swear she sounds better on SACD now (we had the dealer's demo unit for the 3 months this all took).

2 happy campers, Dr Dave and Kathy