Description: SACD/CD/CD-R player with balanced (XLR) and single-ended (RCA) line-level outputs, and external power supply. Digital inputs: S/PDIF on RCA and TosLink; both accept PCM from 32 to 96kHz. Digital outputs: S/PDIF on RCA, AES/EBU on XLR, optical (on ST connector); internal sample-rate converter to 96kHz; digital outputs do not function during SACD play. Power consumption: 50W. No other specifications provided.
Dimensions: Player: 19" W by 5 3/8" H by 15" D. Weight: 37 lbs. Power supply: 9½" W by 3¾" H by 15" D. Weight: 10 lbs.
Serial number of…
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Sidebar 1: Specifications
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital source: Accuphase DP-100 SACD/CD transport and DC-101 upsampling DAC, Linn Sondek CD12 CD player.
Preamplifiers: Conrad-Johnson Premier 17LS, Lamm L2, Mark Levinson No.32 Reference.
Power amplifiers: Krell FPB 350mc and Linn Klimax Mono 500 monoblocks.
Loudspeakers: JMlab Utopia.
Cables: Interconnect: Synergistic Research Designer's Reference with Discrete Shielding, TARA The One ISM Onboard, Cardas Golden Reference. Speaker: AudioQuest Everest, Cardas Golden Cross, XLO The Limited. AC: PS Audio Lab Cable, Synergistic Research Designer'…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
Like the Sony transport on which it appears to be based, the Classé Omega takes quite a while to read a disc and decide whether it can be played. However, it does read CD-Rs, so I was able to perform a full suite of tests on it. (Many of my CD-player test signals have been generated in the digital domain using an Audio Precision System One Dual Domain and burned onto CD-R.)
The Omega's error correction was good, but not in the class of the best DVD transport-based players I have experienced of late. It started to mute when playing track 31 on the Pierre…
The presence of this ultrasonic noise with SACD can also be seen in fig.5, which shows wideband spectral analyses of both SACD and external 24-bit sources with a dithered 1kHz tone that is actually below the Omega's noise floor. (I usually use "digital black" for this test, but the Omega appears to shut off its analog output when it detects this signal.) The LPCM data results in a "white" noise floor that starts to rise above 50kHz, presumably due to the sigma-delta DAC's own noise-shaping. However, the DSD data result in a noise floor that peaks at -42dB around 120kHz, before rolling off at…
By contrast, fig.9 shows a similar spectral analysis for the balanced output into the same high (100k ohms) load. Balanced operation tends to cancel even-order harmonics, hence the disappearance of the fourth harmonic in this graph compared with fig.8, and the halving in level of the second from -76dB (0.015%) to -83dB (0.007%). But the third harmonic has increased by almost 20dB, to -58dB (0.12%)!
Fig.9 Classé Omega, balanced spectrum of 50Hz sinewave, DC-1kHz, at 0dBFS into 100k ohms (linear frequency scale).
Thankfully, things don't get significantly worse into the…
Manufacturer's Comment
Editor: The Classé design team thanks Jonathan Scull for his rigorous review of our new SACD/CD player. He was able to hear (and confirm our own findings) that there is still a little more to discover in the discs in the vast music libraries Stereophile readers now own. More important, he discovered the even richer possibilities appearing in the SACD format.
Regarding the high level of crosstalk that John Atkinson measured on the RCA outputs only: Because he found the crosstalk on the balanced outputs to be as low as our specs, we believe the culprit is a…
A man who had just looked through his very first Stereophile---April's "Recommended Components" issue picked up at a newsstand---recently called to ask my advice on a certain inexpensive CD player made by a large mid-fi company. I told him I hadn't auditioned the player and thus couldn't comment on its worth. The man then proceeded to read me the player's specifications, finally informing me that the player "had the new 1-bit thing"---all in the belief that I could make a recommendation based on what he'd just told me. He apparently had been conditioned to believe that not only was "the 1-bit…
Robert Pirsig expressed these ideas so well in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when he said, "Care and Quality are internal and external aspects of the same thing." Because the high-end designer cares, his products have more quality---or, in audiophile-speak, are more musical.
What high-end products do that mass-market products mainly do not is to produce a powerful intimacy with the music. The mediocre product never passes the threshold from good sound to creating magic in the listening room. Why not? Because in their development, the designers didn't listen, tweak the design,…
But is musicality intrinsic to some products and not others, or is it something else?
Musicality, which every high-end designer strives for in his product, is more than "something" which some products have and others don't. Musicality is an event---a dynamic, flowing experience---not a static condition that exists in greater "quantity" in some products. Musicality is the relationship between music and listener---how deeply involved the listener becomes in the music, with the playback system serving as the intermediary. It is the abandonment of all thought except the music's meaning (…
Letters in response appeared in Vol.14 No.10, October 1991
Well said, Bob!
Editor:
I have been a subscriber since 1983 and have seen contributors come and go. Arrivals and departures have been welcomed over the years, as have "columns and corners." Of course, there have been regrettable losses as well.
Robert Harley's July "As We See It" is an opinion that provoked me to write. RH has clearly, honestly, and passionately explained what defines "high-end" audio, giving us all a new and better defined tool for argument. Well said! Well done!
In the relatively short…