This was a very good CD player in its day but its day was many years ago. The Magnavox CDB610 CD player had two new solid state AVA current to voltage amplifiers installed internally, along with their power supply and the first stages of the analog filters. The external box contains two hybrid vacuum tube final analog filters and output circuits (not room to fit it all inside the chassis) and their power supply. The external box is only appropriate for this particular design.
The weak spot in the unit now is that Philips Magnavox no longer supplies repair parts for the basic 610 CD player. CD players in general are now considered throwaway items, not units to repair. The top bearing plate, a 25 cent easy to replace nylon part that is the most likely wear item is no longer available, and when it dimples from the pressure of the steel ball bearing riding on it, CDs will no longer track properly, especially the first (inside) tracks where the disk is spinning the fastest.
Can you expect great sound from this unit? Yes you can, but only if it is still working properly mechanically. Understand that when it fails mechanically, it too will unfortunately be a throw away unit now days.
We pride outselves in being able to keep anything we have ever built running reliably and economically, but with this unit we are at the mercy of a big corporation's decision to discontine parts service - - - one reason we no long work on products that require custom one-off repair parts that we cannot be assured of sourcing in the future.
All new AVA products are built with very high quality OEM parts and given the exellent reliability and fault tolerance of our products, we expect many years of useful service.
With the old Magnavox based CD players we reworked, we are sad that we cannot expect that same level of future performance any more.
Frank Van Alstine
