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Description: Single-box CD player. Compatible formats: CD (WAV "Red Book"), MP3, WMA. CD-R. Analog output level: 2.15V maximum (minimum load impedance, 10k ohms). Digital output level: 0.5V. Power consumption (115V): 13.5W.
Dimensions: 8.7" (220mm) W by 3.5" (90mm) H by 13.5" (342mm) D. Weight:7 lb (3.2kg).
Finish: Black.
Serial number of unit reviewed: 29040.
Price: $1095. Approximate number of dealers: 120.
Manufacturer: Rega Research Limited, 6 Coopers Way, Temple Farm Industrial Estate, Southend on Sea, Essex SS2 5TE, England, UK. Tel: (…

Analog Sources: Garrard 301, Thorens TD 124 turntables; Audio-Creative GrooveMaster II, EMT 997 tonearms; EMT TSD 15, Shindo Laboratory SPU pickup heads; Miyajima Laboratory Saboten L, MusiKraft/Denon DL-103 cartridges.
Digital Source: Sony SCD-777 SACD/CD player.
Preamplification: Auditorium 23 Hommage T1 & T2 step-up transformers; Shindo Laboratory Monbrison (2017) preamplifier.
Power Amplifier: Shindo Laboratory Haut-Brion.
Loudspeakers: DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/93.
Cables: Interconnects: Audio Note AN-Vx, Luna Red, Shindo…

Like the Naim CD5 XS, which Art Dudley reviewed in the November 2017 issue, the Rega Apollo has no digital inputs of any kind. That limited my measurement of its technical behavior to using 16-bit test files burned to a CD-R. I tested the Rega with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 As We See It").

The Rega's error correction was good—no interruptions were apparent in the player's output until the single gaps in the data spiral on the Pierre Verany Digital Test CD reached 1.5mm in length, when there were occasional glitches. (The…

The sampling theory formulated by Claude Shannon in the late 1940s had a key requirement: The signal to be sampled must be band-limited—that is, it must have an absolute upper-frequency limit. With that single constraint, Shannon's work yields a remarkable result: If you sample at twice that rate—two samples per period for the highest frequency the signal contains—you can reproduce that signal perfectly. Perfectly. That result set the foundation for digital audio, right up to the present. Cue the music.

However,…

Stuart: If properly managed, upward imaging need have no negative impact on the sound, especially if the images are beyond the frequency range of associated electronics or transducers. Nevertheless, MQA applies quite specific constraints, not just to replicate what was heard in the studio but to maintain envelope and slew rate.

Austin: MQA's main claim is that it improves temporal response—hence, sound quality—by removing digital-conversion–induced "timing artifacts." There's less "ringing," and no "pre-echo." Impulse…

In "Into the Fold," my article on MQA in the February 2018 Stereophile, I presented measurements of a particular MQA file (2L 2L-078) showing that MQA encoding caused the MQA file to differ radically from the unencoded DXD (24/352.8) version, adding significant noise even within the audioband—although, as I noted, I found that difference inaudible. In his "Manufacturer's Comment" in that issue, Bob Stuart said that the file in question "was one of the first to be encoded to MQA (in December 2015)," and "one of a dozen albums that used the early Sphynx2…

In the March 2018 issue of Stereophile, in my account of the involvement of Karlheinz Brandenburg and the Fraunhofer Institute's facilitation of MP3 and file sharing, I inadvertently aped Brandenburg's own sanitized account. In interviews, Brandenburg has claimed that, in 1997, an Austrian graduate student bought a copy of the MP3 encoder and shared it online via an FTP site; that's the account I repeated last month. But in his excellent book How Music Got Free: A Story of Obsession and Invention (Viking Penguin, 2015), Stephen Witt makes a…

That American jazz pianist Brad Mehldau has made a recording of J.S. Bach's music should come as no great surprise to anyone who's followed his extraordinarily varied career. In many ways, it seems a natural progression.

Having become one of the most important jazz pianists of this century, and dabbled in classical-flavored…

Bruno is the lanky, braided-beard, thirtysomething owner of a small, well-stocked record shop in Montreal, and we stood facing each other on either side of a glass case filled with vinyl paraphernalia. Bruno has made the most of his limited space. Every foot of each wall supports a shelf crammed with music-related merchandise: rock and jazz…