The other day I ran across this Denon DVM-725 5-disc DVD/CD/MP3/WMA/DTS player/changer that was supposedly junk. The drawer did not move in or out reliably and the carousel did not spin quite as expected. A recent post from a couple of weeks ago described the rescue of a similar Sony changer.
That project turned out to be very successful, and I figured there was nothing to lose by taking a chance on this Denon machine. As it turns out, the Denon’s problems were similar to those of the Sony’s, but the mechanism inside the Denon is significantly different.
In the case of the Sony, the laser pickup is fixed in one position and does not move. The pickup has a clamping device to grab and hold the CDs, but it does not move around the machine. The carousel in the Sony moves the discs in and out of position relative to the laser pickup. The drawer carries the carousel in and out of the machine for loading and unloading of the CDs.
In the Denon the laser pickup is attached to the drawer and moves with the drawer as it goes in and out of the machine. The carousel moves the discs, as with the Sony, but the attachment of the pickup to the drawer was a surprise.
It appears that the motor and gear assembly that moves the drawer was out of alignment. Once I reset the motor and gears to their “normal” relative position, it was a matter of setting the drawer and carousel assembly (which I had removed earlier) back down onto the rails upon which the assembly slides. When I turned the Denon back on the internal electronics “understood” the positioning of the various parts and pieces and everything worked fine from then on.
I have been playing the machine for hours, swapping discs, opening and closing the drawer, and so on. So far there has not been a single glitch. The machine has been working perfectly. It is worth pointing out that this Denon is old enough where it cannot play Blu-Ray discs and it does not have HDMI out. However, the component video is very good and the CD sound is top-notch. I downloaded a PDF of the user manual from the Web and although it does not have a remote, those are easy to aquire.
Not bad, eh?
