Disc Players

Supply of dedicated CD drives – particularly the preferred solutions from Philips and Sony – all but dried up in the late 1990s with the market dominance of comprehensive CD-ROM/DVD mechanisms. Those brands that maintained new ranges of CD players, Rotel included, were forced to rely on a hotch-potch of Far Eastern suppliers for the lasers, servo controllers, mechanisms, etc, or pressed an ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM into service, to keep new models on the shelves. Rotel has traditionally adopted the piecemeal approach, finding the best suppliers for each drive component. The CD drive, RF amp and decoding/error-correction chips used in its 14 and 15 series players are all Toshiba-sourced and although these parts were obsoleted over six years ago, Rotel had the foresight to acquire a ‘very large stash that will last at least ten years’, says Daren Orth, the brand’s CTO.

The Michi Q5’s top-loading transport uses these same key Toshiba ICs but the laser, motors and (necessarily) the code written for the servo/decoder board are all specific to this model. Moreover, the linear-tracking laser is fitted to a CNC-machined alloy plate suspended from a U-shaped steel frame, the complete assembly weighing in at 1.7kg (and another 1.1kg for the circular top cover). The tray is also alloy – there are no plastic moving parts in the Michi Q5 aside from the magnetic puck that clamps the CD to the motor spindle. PM