Respinning the Compact Discs

We've occasionally commented around changes with my stereo system on this blog although they are infrequent as having got a system to the point I'm happy with its reliability and sound unlike some looking for the next step over the rainbow, I prefer to leave it be and enjoy the resulting music.

While at one point the compact disc looked as if it was going to be phased out, sales have started to rise, used discs can be had for peanuts and having a player around continues to make sense not least as few classical new titles get a vinyl release.

Starting first, this is the Cambridge Audio CXC100 v2 compact disc transport, which sinks its  not in considerable cost into advanced servo controls for clean tracking of discs and the unannounced incorporation of CD Text, which gives you album name and track details on discs encoded with it.

It was designed to work with their own streamers and amplifers with a digital input as of itself it just plays the disc so needs that to be literally heard.

I partnered it with a used bargain, the 2012 original Rega DAC-r, a extremely high quality digital to analogue converor that takes the naughts and ones from the transport, cleans up any "jitter" and converts it into analogue sound you connect to your stereo.

It has two optical inputs which generally I don't use, two co-axial ones all of which handle from 32 to 192 kilo bits per second at 16 to 24 bit resolution and a USB one which only goes as far as 48 kbs which might of been an issue if say playing "High Resolution" files from a computer via that input and was put right on the 2016 revised model.

What is a very nice touch is it does actually have digital outputs so that cleaned up digital signal can for instance be recorded without having to unplug sources.

Onlike a good number today rather than Upsample every source before decoding it, it plays each at its own native resolution which makes for simplier circuits and cleaner sound of which this has bags of detail and exceptional timing so it is very easy to follow the busiest parts of say a piano performance without everything starting to sound blurred while the softer passages retain their delicate feel.

It makes the most of regular cds while being able to bypass the inexpensive circuits of other digital products such as the DAB+ tuner.

I'm delighted with the sound of it.