Sidebar 3: Measurements
It's been a long time since we reviewed a CD player that included no digital inputs of any kind, so my measurement of the Hegel Mohican's technical behavior was limited to using 16-bit test files, using both those on CBS CD-1 test disc and those burned to a CD-R. The Mohican's balanced and unbalanced analog outputs were connected to my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It").
The Mohican's error correction was excellent—no glitches were apparent in the player's output until the gaps in the data spiral on the Pierre Verany…
It's the sad realization at the heart of every product review: No matter what the writer has to say, the reader may hear things—or see or feel or taste things—rather differently. I refer not only to physiological differences in hearing acuity from person to person, but also to the no-less-critical differences in the ways we process and prioritize the things we perceive. It's an oft-made point that bears any amount of repetition: In our pugilistic little pastime, the priorities of the listener who values, say, fidelity to the musical timing captured in a recording over fidelity to that…
Manufacturer's Comment
Editor: Thank you for publishing extensive and detailed technical measurements of the Hegel Mohican CD player.
We were surprised to see that the spectrum in fig.4 showed some low-level (–120 to –130dBr), discrete, 100Hz harmonic artifacts in the Mohican's analog output, because we have not seen these artifacts in our own measurements when testing the Mohican with Hegel's Audio Precision SYS2722A test systems.
After investigating this in Hegel's R&D lab, our conclusion is that the low-level 100Hz artifacts are inherent with the particular 0dB,…
While in Setup mode, I tried to advance through the functions by again pressing the Setup button for longer than 2 seconds, but that didn't work. Then I tried pressing the Input button, but that didn't work either. Finally and entirely by accident, I held the Setup button for less than 2 seconds, and that did the trick: I was at last able to make my way to the LCD Brightness screen and to restore—you guessed it—LCD brightness.
Thus encouraged, at the end of my time with the ZeroUno, I tested some of its non-default settings; that said, except as noted otherwise, all the remarks that…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Digital-to-analog converter. Tube complement: two CV181 (6SN7). DAC: ESS Sabre32 ES9018. Input formats: 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192, 352.8, 384kHz; DoP at DSD64, DSD128. Digital inputs: S/PDIF (optical, 96kHz and below), S/PDIF (BNC & RCA, 192kHz and below), USB 2.0. Analog outputs: single-ended on RCA and XLR jacks. Maximum output voltage: 1.77V RMS. Output impedance: <1 ohm (see "Measurements" sidebar).
Dimensions: 15.5" (400mm) W by 8" (183mm) H by 13.5" (360mm) D. Weight: 22.22 lbs (10.1kg).
Serial number of unit reviewed: 1609…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Garrard 301 turntable; EMT 997 tonearm; EMT OFD 15 & TSD 15, Ortofon SPU #1S, Shindo Laboratory SPU pickup heads; Denon DL 103 cartridge.
Digital Sources: AudioQuest DragonFly, Halide Designs DAC HD USB DACs; Apple iMac computer (late 2015) running OS 10.12.1 & Roon v.1.2, Build 165; Sony SCD-777ES SACD/CD player.
Preamplification: Hommage T1 & T2 step-up transformers, Shindo Laboratory Masseto preamplifier.
Power Amplifiers: Shindo Laboratory Corton-Charlemagne (monoblocks) & Haut-Brion (stereo).
…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I measured the CanEver ZeroUno with my Audio Precision SYS2722 system (see the January 2008 "As We See It"), using both the Audio Precision's optical and electrical digital outputs and USB data sourced from my MacBook Pro running on battery power with Pure Music 3.0 playing WAV and AIFF test-tone files. Apple's USB Prober utility identified the CanEver as "xCORE USB Audio 2.0" from "XMOS," and confirmed that its USB port operated in the optimal isochronous asynchronous mode. Apple's AudioMIDI utility revealed that, via USB, the ZeroUno accepted 24-bit integer data…
GamuT's designer and CEO, Benno Baun Meldgaard, was on hand in the first room I entered on Floor 4 to introduce the new optional R2R tape playback board ($1990) for the GamuT D3i dual-mono preamp ($8490). Whether the presence of a number of new and old tape decks at AXPONA—the one in this room was a rebuilt Studer—signals a rekindled interest in tape amongst anyone other than confirmed audiophiles is unclear. But what was clear is that the piano on Ben Webster's Gentle Ben sounded beautiful and mellow. The horn, in turn, was appropriately bright, and the presentation distinguished by a nice…
Doing my best to leave the rest of the poetry to the music, my second-day new-product coverage began with a visit to the Playback Designs room, manned by the company's president and designer, DSD champion Andreas Koch. There, I found two new Playback Designs products, the MPD-8 DAC ($22,000) and MPT-8 Digital Music Transport (target price $14,000-$20,000). Both are due out at year's end. While Andreas assured me that what I would hear would be the final sound of both products, I know there will be some software fixes to the transport, because it declared that my 11-track La Perla Baroqua SACD…
While ubiquity is not necessarily synonymous with high quality, the fact that Aurender's music servers/streamers appeared in at least 12 exhibit rooms at AXPONA 2017 certainly indicates that they're doing something right. In fact, in the third-floor room in which Aurender partnered with GamuT and Grand Prix Audio, their A10 caching music server and player with analog outputs ($5500) was the crucial source of excellent sound.
Aurender's sole all-in-one lifestyle product—their only server that includes a DAC—the A10 was just updated in February to offer MQA playback. Heard in a room that…
