Disc Players

Ray of light How many features can you cram onto a CD player? Raysonic's latest appears to have all the bases covered, says Jason Kennedy The CD 128S is a brightly lit and styled-up player and just a glance at the back panel reveals that it has balanced and single-ended outputs, as well as digital in and outputs of all the key varieties. More importantly, it’s a fully balanced machine with a Class A output stage driven by no fewer than four triode valves, all this in a toploading aluminium chassis. It looks like an awful lot of hardware for the money. The question is, does the sound match the appearance? Electric blue Raysonic is a dedicated to valve electronics and has a wide range of amplifiers and a growing portfolio of CD players.

A touch of glass Can this substantial valve output CD player mix it with the hardcore contenders? Jason Kennedy finds out Ayon is an Austrian company that produces sources, amplifi ers and loudspeakers, as well as glass audio components. It makes its own power valves at a facility in the Czech Republic and builds some very high-end products – it’s most affordable power amp, for example, costs nearly £20,000. The CD-07s sits at the opposite end of the scale and looks to be an attempt to break into a sector of the market with more potential buyers. A deeply competitive sector, of course, but this player is heavy on features.

Far from creeky Simplicity is an admirable virtue, opines Richard Black, as he considers the performance level of Creek’s new Evolution 2 CD player For less than the price of the Evo 2 CD, you can buy a universal disc player that handles all the various flavours of digital discs, reproduces moving and still pictures as well as audio and generally makes this machine look a bit lacklustre. So what’s the point? If you didn’t already know the answer, you probably wouldn’t even be reading this magazine, but there’s more to it than simply knowing that the player has been optimised for one task alone. Just before reviewing this, we had some time with a Blu-ray (etc. ) player and there were times when we could cheerfully have heaved it out of the window.

Masterful multitasker The new UD7006 universal from Marantz plays just about every digital disc you could name. Richard Black asks if more means merrier The term ‘universal’, as applied to pretty much anything in home electronics, is generally only valid for a few minutes these days. No sooner is a ‘universal’ player on the market than some new format, specification or system is launched which is beyond its ken. That said, we can’t actually think of anything this player won’t do.

Stello CDT100/DA100 Well priced two-box solution does things differently, with superb build and a multitude of inputs and outputs Stello is part of Korean company April Music’s roster and we’ve seen a variant of the DA100 DAC before when Russ Andrews modified it and sold it as the DA-1 alongside a matching pre/headphone amp and power amp. The solid, half-size brick construction remains with this pairing, which by virtue of its two-box nature has the most varied array of socketry in this group. The CDT100 must be the most affordable top-loading transport in the game; it’s well built with a shiny magnetic clamp and acrylic cover that doesn’t need to be in place in use. What differentiates it is the provision of an I 2S digital output on a mini DIN socket.

Hanss Acoustics CD-20 Digital player from the analogue expert is well priced and impressive for its upsampling capacity Hanss Acoustics made its debut in these pages with the T-30 turntable (HFC 331), one of three high-mass, multi-motor designs that it produces. Despite the presence of phono stages and even a record-cleaner in the range, it’s not just an analogue company, as the CD player proves. Like the turntables, the CD-20 is a substantial beast with high build and finish quality for the asking price. In fact, the all-metal remote, which is styled to match the player, is the most attractive in the test.

Audio Analogue Maestro Elegant Italian has the technical ability and the sonic skills to charm our blind-listening panel Audio Analogue’s Maestro range represents the pinnacle of its achievements: the Special Edition power amplifiers that carry the same badge cost in the region of £20,000. The Maestro CD player is the penultimate Audio Analogue disc-spinner, second only to the SE version which comes in at twice the price. Our test model is the second revision of the design, or CD192/24 REV2. 0 as they call it in the technical dept.