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krbahr · **Posted:** 03 Jul 2022, 01:31

As I mentioned above, if you take an oscilloscope and watch the RF coming from the laser you will see it returns various strengths off the disc. If the signal is just a little weak the digital decoding for the sound (this is where the DTS is also placed) will start to have dropouts way before you see any dropouts in the video. You can completely loose the digital tracks and the video still looks fine. You can open the player, adjust the RF level and experience this on any player.

With LD all discs are NOT pressed equally, normally a calibrated player is adjusted properly and these variations in RF signal will not cause dropouts but if the RF signal from the laser is weakening in the laser or electronics then the variations in the signal can cause dropouts, and YES some discs can play fine and others have dropouts.

The 7020 is a repackaged Pioneer CLD-97 (no McIntosh improvements, just many have an AC-3 board added and in a McIntosh package) and many of these have a problem with age where the signal in the unit signal degrades with time and they eventually totally stop playing. This is not the actual laser failing but somewhere in the electronics there is a failure, I have not had the time to trace the issue but I'm afraid it's going to be one of the IC's as I've done full cap replacement on the mainboard with no help.