A curious observation.

I got a portable CD player (Panasonic SL-CT800) as a Christmas present.
It is well made, has excellent sound quality ...  and one huge flaw.

To conserve battery power the designers have implemented a mechanism
which rotates the CD faster than normal for a few seconds, then cuts off
the motor and allows it to spin down, then speeds it up again - and so
on - and evidently, compensates for that continuously variable rotation
speed in software to give even playback.  The problem is that, in quiet
passages, the whine of the speeding up is horribly obvious and distracts
from the music.

The cure was to buy a pair of in-ear headphones, which efficiently cuts
out the whine - and every other noise outside them - and, for good
measure, are far superior to those supplied with the player.

What worries me is that the problem is so obvious it seems the player
could simply not have been tested using music with prolonged quiet
passages.

Has anyone else come across similar "classical-music-hostile" hardware?
I have certainly never observed such a problem before, or even thought
that it could exist ...

Alastair