YAMAHACD-S3000SL Natural Sound CD Player

UPDATE and TIPS: Alas, I am having some problems after three years, but some of them are manageable with a few simple tools. Only do these if the unit is out of warranty, although I have been told by an authorized service center that parts are not available, so if your problem is severe, petition Yamaha for a replacement! 1. If the laser is having problems reading discs, dropping out or skipping, try cleaning the lens gently with a clean camera grade microfiber cloth wrapped around a cotton swab. Use only high percentage isopropyl (not ordinary rubbing) alcohol. Preferably medical grade. 2. To get to said lens one must unscrew and remove the plate with the top coupling device (clamp assembly.) When putting the clamp assembly back on, do not tighten the screws more than needed to affix the clamp securely and test to make sure the tray moves freely in the open-close cycle without any catching or scraping noises. The screws closest to the front particularly should not be tightened very much or the tray may not even come out. Under no circumstances operate the close function with the cover off and laser exposed to your eyes! 3. There is another hack they do not tell you about, which comes to my current problem. Sometimes, the tray will not open, or if you do insert a disc, it will not even attempt to load it (different from a failure to read.) There is a long slot with an arrow embossed nearby on the underside of the unit. It takes some doing to get to it, but if one puts a small flat head screwdriver in the slot, a lock mechanism can be found. You may want to tip the unit on its side and shine a strong light in the slot so you know what you are aiming for. Usually moving the lock in the direction of the arrow and back again will temporarily fix the problem and the tray will open and close and read the disc. If one is lucky, this only has to be done every few days. 4. Bonus tip: if everything is working and it won't recognize the disc after loading, rub you fingers around the inside of the center hole from both sides of the disc. The slightest and even almost invisible-under-magnification burr can cause a read failure. This seems to a problem mostly with expensive players (my former Marantz) and never a cheap one. Reduce the burr with a finger nail, bit of sandpaper, or my favorite, a Swiss army knife blade. Don't remove any more than necessary to restore to playability. I do wonder if a new model (2200?) is in the works with the attendant price increase. If so, I hope they are redesigning the tray mechanism. From my reading of complaints here and elsewhere, it seems like this is the weak point and probably causes many of the reported issues.As you can tell, I have been through the wars with this unit, but the sound is so good I put up with it. Below is my original review, unedited.I will say I have not had any experience of excessive or even noticeable noise from this player. The unit was manufactured in November 2018, so perhaps someone at Yamaha got the message. Even my Sony ES player made some noise while playing certain discs. The superlatives about the quality of sound are justified. Whether it is more accurate reading of the disc, the D-A converter, or careful voicing, this player produces a detailed and spacious sound not to be heard even on a lesser Yamaha unit I have. So far, it has easily earned five stars.

If you're looking for a good value proposition relative to a CD/SACD player, keep looking. On the other hand, if you like wasting money, feel free to check it out. I bought this player new for about $3,000 and, in less than 4 years, it failed. Furthermore, even during the latter period of operation, it had occasional, random issues (e.g., periodic sound fade outs, random inability to read discs, etc.). I only wish that the significant problems had surfaced prior to warranty expiration. In reality, if Yamaha was willing to stand behind this inferior model, the company would have offered more than an anemic two-year warranty. Given the price point of this unit, it should have had at least a 5-year warranty. When I purchased this unit, I viewed Yamaha as an organization with solid brand image......Not anymore. In summary, I have bought several CD players since 1985, and this is the second worst unit I ever owned. Not impressed at all and Yamaha should be ashamed of itself.

I replaced a Rotel RCD 1072 with this unit. The Rotel is very good, but I wanted a deck that could play sacd, and I wanted better performance on red book cds as well. I got those things. The Yamaha has more three dimensional depth than the rotel and is more laidback (some reviewer called the Yamaha "polite" which is a good description). However, on some cds the rotel's more forward presentation is more appealing to me. An odd characteristic of the Yamaha is the adjustable dpll. It says that the lower the bandwidth setting, the better the accuracy of the dac clock but the higher the likelihood of skips. I don't understand this and the literature provided doesn't explain it. In practice it means that occasionally a disc skips and I have to change the dpll setting to a higher bandwidth and that is annoying. When I bought this unit I only intended to keep it if it had clearly better sound than the rotel. It does, and I'm keeping it although the improvement is very subtle. The improvement is noticeable on regular cds, not just on sacds. Also, it doesn't hurt that the build is very solid and the look of the unit is appealing.