Back in 2001, Philips Electronics ceased production of its own 'industrial standard' compact disk transports. Presently, new so-called "Philips transports" are quintessentially Asian-made clones constructed to much lesser standards and are of questionable reliability.

Dissatisfied, AMR went back to the drawing board to develop its in-house OptiDrive®transport mechanism which has incorporated major proprietary improvements to a genuine and already excellent mechanism.

OptiDrive® is comprised of the high-precision and reliable Japanese-made Sony K-series transport allied to the very musical Phillips CD-18 servo system. The resulting exceptional sonic performance of the OptiDrive® is a natural and perfect partner for the unrivalled digital-to-analogue section.

The OptiDrive® transport mechanism also uses a high-torque, direct-drive motor sourced from Mabuchi Japan and utilises a very substantial CNC machined aluminium CD well for excellent resonance and shielding properties. The CD spindle was designed to provide extra-stable support to the CD (250% more surface area). The CD clamp is an in-house design to maximise the surface area of the CD to ensure proper support, leading to optimised stability and minimised resonance.

After resolving the mechanical issues associated with a reliable and accurate data extraction from CD AMR have added to the OptiDrive® system a 16 Frame Memory Buffer and a specially designed spindle motor control phase locked loop that ensures the buffer is kept filled at all times. All these features coupled with proprietary software (for exceptional tracking ability and functionality) has ensured that proper reading of the compact disk and extraction of the music-data contained herein without errors or jitter, is taken to a whole new level.