Audio Research CD2 randomly skips

had my cd-2 for about 3 yrs and have had minimal skipping problems (like less than 5 times over the whole time) not recognizing a disc is a lot more frequent but usually reinserting a time or two gets the dis played. I really wanted a Wadia 860 but like Maxgain indicated, for the money the Arc was hard to beat.

Since I last posted on this topic I have bought two CD's which have both been new, recent releases. The first one would not start the disc right away and then would skip a few times during the first track. I took it back and tried another copy which plays fine. I just got another new release today which seems to make the machine search for the begining and if it finally plays it skips constantly! I am wondering if this has anything to do with simple piss poor quality control or if something worse may be at work here. Do you think that some of these "new release" CD's may have some of that copy protection crap encoded in them that is freaking out my player(CD2)? It is strange that until now damn near every CD(with the above exceptions)played fine. And just these recent releases won't? I can't point my finger at anti-copy encoding yet since the replacement copy of the first one plays, and a friend of mine turned me onto the second and his copy played fine here. Could be just a coincedence, but maybe not? Any thoughts out there?

It may be that CD's are becomming the 8-track of "the new century"...the one that began in 2001....not 2000.

Audiophile sonics and quality are not in keeping with the multi-channel/download mainstream. We must remember that one of the most successful ads of late is..."dude yur gettin a Dell".. Not exactly,..."high-end".

Thanks for all the good inputs, I just have to send it back to ARC for repair. It is still a first class player after all. Happy Holidays!