The Surprising Truth Behind Many Western CD Players: Who Really Designed Them?

The CREEK Evolution-CD has finally stopped recognising CDs altogether — the sort of thing that might send one into a mild panic thinking the machine has broken down at last, but in fact this is a recurring annual event. The drive mechanism in my CREEK EVO-CD, which I acquired nine years ago, is the VAM1202 (CDM-12.x) designed by Philips of the Netherlands, and it uses a linear tracking system.

The VAM1202 (CDM-12.x) is a mass-produced linear tracking drive mechanism that was widely used until a few years ago in budget-range CD players from the former Philips/Marantz stable, as well as in various overseas CD players. That said, the CDM-12 series — unlike PC drives — offers reasonably decent sound quality, but frankly its durability leaves quite a lot to be desired. It is a sufficiently problematic design that one regularly comes across VAM1202/CDM-12-equipped machines listed as faulty junk with skipping issues, both on Yahoo! Auctions and at HARD OFF.

My own CREEK EVO-CD is no exception: from around the second or third year of ownership it began skipping occasionally on the outer tracks of discs past the 60-minute mark, and since I couldn’t be bothered arranging a paid repair I carried on using it regardless, nursing it along as best I could. Then from around the fifth year it started occasionally failing to recognise discs at all during loading, which became a bit of a headache…

The cause appears to be insufficient read output from the pickup, and once the symptoms appeared I found I could fix it quite easily by opening the top cover and cleaning the pickup lens with a cotton bud and alcohol. The lens tends to get contaminated by the humidity of the rainy season or winter, and the problem crops up roughly once every one to two years — clean the lens, it goes away, then it comes back again. ※ Incidentally, the skipping on the outer tracks does not completely disappear after cleaning, but it is noticeably reduced.

And so, in April 2017, I finally dragged myself to it and cleaned the pickup using non-chitosan baby cotton buds and IPA. Truth be told, I had actually left it sitting unplayable since February… The last time I checked my cleaning log it showed July 2015, so this was the first time in about a year and a half. A clean lens reduces the burden on the servo current and error correction compared to a cloudy one, which in turn benefits the sound quality — so leaving it unattended out of sheer laziness really is not a good idea.

Philips VAM1202/12. There is no Philips branding on it, so the unit fitted in the EVO-CD was in all likelihood an OEM-compatible drive from the outset (this is a legitimately purchased new unit). While the lid was off I took the opportunity to hoover out every nook and cranny with the Electrolux vacuum cleaner. ※ Quite why dust accumulates inside when the chassis has no ventilation slots whatsoever is a mystery…

Incidentally, unlike CREEK’s mid-to-upper-range models which are made in Britain, the Evolution series of that era was Made in PRC — that is to say, made in China — and it rather looks as though the manufacturer was in fact SHANLING, the audio maker based in Shenzhen, China… ※ My apologies if I have this wrong.
SHANLING produced a CD player called the SHANLING CD-S100, whose internal circuitry, detail finishing, remote control and so on are almost identical to the EVO-CD. And it is not just the CREEK EVO-CD and EVO-CD2 — open up the lids of players such as the MUSIC HALL CD25.2, ONIX CD-2, ONIX CD-5, ONIX XCD-88, ONIX XCD-99, USHER CD-1, and CARAT C57, and it becomes immediately apparent that all of these celebrated British, American, and French brand CD players are essentially SHANLING-based products. Likewise, relatively affordable SACD players from overseas brands are similarly based on SHANLING’s own SACD players.

That said, it is by no means a case of identical internals across the board — the board layout varies across several patterns depending on the position of the drive mechanism, and the specific components used, such as the power transformer and capacitors, differ from model to model. Each brand and model has received a considerable amount of individual modification — one might even call it tuning.

The CREEK EVO-CD and EVO-CD2 are fitted with a higher-grade R-core transformer rather than a cheap EI-core type, while some brands such as MUSIC HALL and CARAT go with a toroidal transformer. It would appear, then, that SHANLING acted as the manufacturing subcontractor, supplying the base chassis and fundamental design, with each unit then built to the specification of the respective retail brand.

I had actually noticed all of this through overseas searches right from when I purchased the Evolution-CD back in 2008, and I spent quite some time debating whether to write it up as an exposé — but in the end I held my tongue, as I felt uncomfortable at the thought of harming the business of a small import distributor. ※ Since every model mentioned here is now discontinued, I thought it was probably fine to make it public at this point. What first tipped me off to the OEM arrangement was a series of puzzling details: why, when CREEK had used Crystal Semiconductor DAC chips across their CD players throughout the years (and more recently Wolfson), were the EVO-CD and EVO-CD2 alone fitted with a Burr-Brown PCM1738E? And why, when CREEK had always insisted on green LED indicators, were these two models the only ones with blue?

This is perhaps the inevitable sadness of an entry-level model: when you take a design that originated elsewhere and try to give it a CREEK-like character, there are limits to what you can achieve, and the sound quality does differ somewhat from that of the true CREEK players made in Britain — the CLASSIC CD Player and EMF Sequel2 that I own. The basic character is a contemporary sound with sheen, resolution, and well-defined outlines, to which a degree of CREEK-like colour and atmosphere — something reminiscent of Scotch whisky — has been added. Because the underlying transparency is higher than that of an original CREEK with its strong traditional British character, the result is a rather versatile-sounding player that is not overly fussy about source material.

Chinese manufacturers tend to have a rather poor reputation in Japan, but SHANLING is a different matter — open one up and the build quality is clearly excellent, and in terms of sound quality too it offers (at domestic Chinese prices, at least) a quite remarkable performance for the money. Having heard the OEM versions from CREEK, ONIX, and others, my personal feeling is that these are actually more balanced and higher-quality CD players than many Japanese-branded budget-range players, which so often take on an artificially lightweight character as a way of differentiating them from the upper models in the same range.

In China, below the SHANLING CD-S100 there is a half-size CD player called the TEMPO eC1B, and despite its modest price, opening it up reveals a Burr-Brown PCM1796 + NE5532P combination with a toroidal transformer — looking rather well-sorted indeed. The drive mechanism in the older SHANLING PCD3000A appears to have been the VAM1202/12, but at some point the current model seems to have quietly switched to an SF-HD8650 (EP-HD850). This is definitely a machine I would like to get hold of and try for myself…

SHANLING Portable Audio ⇒ [Amazon.co.jp] [Bic Camera] [Yahoo! Shopping]
※ In recent years SHANLING has also expanded into the DAP and portable audio market.

The current models, the CREEK EVOLUTION 50CD and 100CD, use a toroidal transformer, and the circuit design appears to be entirely CREEK’s own (in other words, not an OEM from SHANLING). The slot-loading mechanism now common in European CD players of recent years may divide opinion among purists, but in terms of sound quality the sweet, warm CREEK tradition appears to have been carried forward intact.

On top of all this, in recent years when the temperature drops in winter the VAM1202’s tray has started taking a long time to open and then refusing to close properly — apparently due to the grease drying out in the gear mechanism. It is not as though the motor or the tray mechanism itself is broken, so it could be fixed by disassembling and re-greasing, making it a minor fault in the grand scheme of things, but a quietly tedious one all the same…

For the past few years I have been keeping an eye on auctions with the intention of replacing the pickup myself as a DIY job, but new compatible pickup lens units have become noticeably scarce on Yahoo! Auctions lately, so I have been thinking I should probably source a set from overseas before long. Overseas auctions still have plenty of not just the lens units but complete tracking mechanisms with lens units available at reasonable prices, so I have been rather complacent about it — but I would like to attempt a DIY disassembly and repair before I suddenly find that parts have dried up entirely, and ideally get hold of a spare mechanism and pickup lens at the same time. There is not a great deal of DIY information out there, which makes the idea of opening it up a slightly daunting prospect…