Rega Saturn. Is it really a giant killer?

One problem I ran into with the home-trial Saturn I had over a weekend was that it seemed to demand pristine disks.

Some of my CDs have a few scratches on them, but generally nothing serious. The Saturn got very upset over a couple of my CDs. I took them out, looked them over, and really couldn't find anything obviously wrong with them. I listened to a lot of different brands of players at the local audio store and this is the first one that got upset with some of the CDs I like to use for testing players.

One CD started skipping a bit - barely noticeable at first - kind of like a skipped heartbeat - but then it started getting stuck and skipping in some places, and in one place it decided it had had enough and simply froze - it stopped advancing the time and muted itself. I had to skip to the next track. I put the same CD in my own player and it played fine. I had this same problem with an Apollo they had at the store too. I'm pretty sure they both use the same transport, so that shouldn't be too surprising.

If you get to home-trial the Saturn, play a lot of CDs to make sure it tracks them well before you plop down $2500.

Timoteo, do you know if the Saturn you took home for trial is current production? I'm asking, as I wonder if Rega has fixed the programming "glitches"

I borrowed the player only a few months ago, so it should be fairly current.

Trade-up program now being offered by Rega - bring in any CDP, working or not and get 15% the Apollo and 25% off the Saturn.