Marantz 8260 CD/SACD

I've heard NOT to use those cleaning CD's. The article I read said they may knok the laser out of alignment. Has anyone experienced that?

I know people who use cleaning cds on 8260 without problems. if the cleaning CD will send the laser out of allignment, what would happen to this unit during shipment?

I bought a Maxell CD lens cleaner yesterday. But I don't know if I need to use it. The player seems to be working perfectly now, even when I leave it on. I'm perplexed by this whole thing.

I want to get the Sony modded and give it a try. But the wife isn't going to let me keep two players and I'd hate to sell the Marantz and have the next person have trouble. I may send it in to Marantz, just to get a clean bill of health before selling it.

send it. they may upgrade software or whatever it is they do, to bring it up to date

This has to be the world's worst CD player in terms of reliability. My unit failed after about a year due to read error, and then it failed three months later with severe distortion and possibly a DC offset (my amplifier goes into protection mode whenever the Marantz is used as a source component). Marantz customer service is awful and will not respond to repeated phone calls. Anyone buying this unit (or possibly any Marantz unit) should proceed with extreme caution.