Shocking!

HFC dropped into the post box today (yes, I do, shush!). In it there's a review of the new Audio Analogue Primo CD player.

HFC say how innovative it is that they've used a CD-ROM mechanism and used its internal D/A conversion.

Hold on. Yes, they've taken a CD rom drive, similar to that for which you'd pay £30 retail (at most! It's not costing them more than a fiver...), put it in a box with a display, power supply and an analogue ouput stage. For this they want £475!!!!!

In other words... the output on the 4 pin MPC3 header on the back of the CD rom drive is the output of the player, after going through a buffer!

 

Surely not

 

:mana: Bet that sounds, err, interesting....

 

How does said player perform according to the review?

CD-ROM drives are absolutely dirt cheap, £10+vat seems to around the norm around here. Using one as a transport, not sure how it'd compare to a 'normal' (designed for hifi not PC) cd mech, but that doesn't sound too bad, but using the drives internal DAC seems to be what you're suggesting (unless I'm missing something), in which case seems a wholly appropriate smiley.

£475 as well, for a player seemingly so simple using a very much off the shelf mech :rds2: with much less than the usual extra components apart from the mech that makes up a cdp.

 

CD ROM drives are used as transport mechs very widely, but yes, this player is using the ultra-cheap as cheap chips DAC that's a part of the CD-rom mech. In fact, it's an entire drive (a samsung... the audio analogue label does not entire cover the original label), and the picture shows all the usual pc connections out the back of it (4 pin molex power, 40 pin IDE, MPC3 audio out header) actually being used.

The review was of the cd player with its matching amp. They were rather keener on the amp (89%) than the CD player (75%), which got about as lukewarm a reception as magazines tend to write.

 

hmmm lots at it, using stock stuff rebranded.

 

Meridian, including 800, and Arcan, among others for sure, use CD ROM drives, and look at the price of them...

 

They use CD rom drive mechs as transports. They don't use the crappy on-board CD-ROM drive DACs.

If you want a taste of how this audio analogue will sound, connect that headphone jack on the front of your computer's CD-ROM drive to your hifi. That's a similar transport/DAC setup.

 

I think this is aimed at the lifestyle market,so it doesn't matter,as long as it looks good

Look at BOSE,they haven't devalued their brand at all,making HIFI out of Blake Seven memorabilia.Oh,hold on.......................

 

To the world of Phillips and sony HIFI is a piss hole in the snow. You will find that most CDPlayers produced today use a CDrom mech, the have to. Not since the days of the phillips pro unipivot mechs has anything been produced dedicated purely for audio replay.

I would be happy to be proved wrong.

 

I'm afraid you are wrong there garyi.

Sony still produce their CDM12 mech (not to be confused with the philips mech of hte same name, which has been discontinued).

Philips still produce the VAM1201 and CD-Pro mechs.

Teac produce the VRDS mech.

These are all dedicated CD mechs.

There is nothing with CD-rom mechs as transport mechanisms at all. The point I'm making is that the dac in a £30 (if that, retail) CD-ROM mech is not exactly high on the manufacturer's priority list, and it will invariably be the cheapest 16/44.1 DAC they can use.

And they're asking CD6000KI money for this, when that has similar if not better output staging, dedicated audio transport (VAM 1201), good quality audio DACs, etc.

 

Hmm. Says more about HFC than Audio Analogue if you ask me.

 

Have to agree with you there somewhat. I can't remember seeing anything getting less than 60%. Needless to say, I won't be renewing my subscription.

 

DVD ROM drives will probably become the norm in the future Some CD-ROM drives are/were very good and have formed the basis for some very high end stuff. Mind you they didnt use the on board DACs thats for sure. I think sony are due to cease production of that mech soon. Philips had a dodgy period with the CDM12.1/3 series. VAM1201 is better and the new VAM2202 is good too. There are still companies making dedicated CD mechs but likely to become fewer. I say bring back the old swing arm mechs CDM1m, CDM4. Great stuff.

 

Did they mention why Audio Analogue have done this? Seems a very strange move.

 

I had a look in my Rotel and it's got the Phillips CDM12, looks quality. Why did they discontinue it?

 

It's done in order to make money. If you don't have to spend time designing the dac stage of the cd player, pay for the parts, etc, your design costs are massively lower as are production costs.

My current cd player (used as a transport) has the last of the top-end swing-arm mechs (CDM4 Pro), which was replaced by the linear CD Pro mech.

 

Isaac,

You didn't mention the other goodies in this month's issue such as a review of Tannoy Yorkminsters . Some of their comments on these big boxes echo my own experience of the DCs in general.

Anyway, back on the the topic, CD-ROMs are cheap purely due to economies of scale. AA will make a relatively small number of these with far higher overheads. To be honest they look very nice for ther price. As for sound, I think I'll reserve judgement until I've heard them. Just because they use CD-ROM transport (yes, with cheapo DAC) doesn't automatically mean they'll sound crap .

 

A firm called "Cyberhome" have beed doing the same with their dvd players for the lasr two years.

 

You can't do quite the same trick with DVD players, because you can only use the drive as a transport as DVD-ROM drives don't have MPEG decoding built-in. What a LOT of manufacturers do with DVD players is to buy in a DVD-ROM transport, buy in an IDE controller and MPEG decoder board, and buy in a switch mode power supply for them. Put them all in a box with some kludge glue, and you have a Myryad MDV500, £1000 please.

I was almost as unimpressed with that as with the audio analogue.