I will not talk much, because the test is most important. Ayon is an Austrian company, that after years of functioning outside the medial world (at least when talking about the English language magazines, which ‘drive’ the business) now enters the spot light. Until now we tested two of its products: the player CD-1 and the integrated amplifier 300B. The CD-3 player is the most expensive source that the company offers. In general it is the CD-1 with an external, worked out power supply that uses tubes to rectify the current for the tubed output stage of the player. So let’s listen. SOUND Just a few moments of listening to the CD-3 is enough to hear, that this is the same kind of sound like the CD-1. It should not be surprising, because this is an ‘enhanced’ CD-1, and this is the same company, but in audio nothing is for sure and 100% predictable. The second observation is regarding the kind of changes – some things remain the same, like drawing, resolution and differentiation, when others, like depth of the stage, power of the sound, its energy and cleanness are visibly better. Ayon sounds with a rather warm, based on massive, dense bass (not contoured, but dense) sound. The midrange is big, we get really solid, full virtual sources, that have nothing in common with ‘polishing’ preferred by other companies, that on this price level is always related to thinning of the sound. Thinning is a word that is not present in Ayon’s vocabulary, it is replaced with words like: saturation, amplifying, filling. To fully understand the topic – this is not a neutral sound in the sense of Accuphase DP-700 (listening session HERE), that is also a very friendly device. I think, that the creators of Ayon did not even want to go in that direction. We do not have here a clear differentiation within a given instrument. However we get a incredibly energrtic, vibrating sound with a drive. When I put on the disc Old Friends-New Roads Allan Taylor (Stockfisch, SFR 357.6047.2, CD; review HERE) I was just pressed into my sofa. Oh boy – Taylor’s voice was recorded perfectly on that disc, there are almost no recordings with such a natural and full vocal. I thought that nothing is going to surprise me, but I was mistaken. The musician just stepped down from the speakers. His voice, deep and energetic – in such a way, that my power amplifier Luxman M-800A clipped in a few places. This is just 60W and even if the power doubles when impedance falls by a half, then some things cannot be surpassed. Also the Harpia Dobermann http://highfidelity.pl/!ev/artykuly/18_09_2007/harpia1.html I use are very current hungry in that subrange. Anyway, the energy was so high, because this is not about exposing this subrange, but about energy, like never before. Such sound, regardless of other aspects, I will tell later about, sets the character of the device. The sound is big, stands in front of the speakers and makes listening to it on full range speakers from a short distance, like I do it, not really comfortable. Ayon CD-3 will be ideal in places where the speakers are far away from the listener, or when we use small stand mount speakers. There we’ll get fire – a big, saturated sound stage and lots of bass. The latter will not flow on the ground, it is clearly springy, but there is more of it than from the DP-500 Accuphase or Lektor Prime Ancient Audio. If I had to compare it with anything else, then I would choose the CD3 MKII Audio Research for comparison – this is a similar tonal balance and priorities. And similar class. In absolute categories the Accuphase and the Lektor have a more neutral, correct sound. But – blame me if I’m wrong – there are hundreds of people that will love that sound, and searched for it their whole life. Do you have an integrated Krell, or another equally even, but a bit devoted from personality device? Ayon will breathe new life into it, a spirit of fullness and joy of playing. With the CD-3 in the sound path all audiophile discussions get quiet, and in time, when we get used to the sound, return, but with another question: “What are we really searching for in hi-fi?” I think that for many people tired of searching, such a proposition, although not politically correct so to speak, will be a revelation. This is not universal sound of course. Rock, electronics, folk, blues are better absorbed with it than jazz or classical music. This is probably due to the fact, that most of the good jazz comes from the ’50, where maximum resolution is required and even small deviations in timbre are not regarded well. And I am not saying that this isn’t nice sound, this is not about that. I listened to many discs of that kind on the Ayon, and everything was full of energy and fire. The instruments were big, clear and had a splendid background in terms of reverb. In addition the Ayon handles showing the differences between recordings quite well, what could be heard for example on the disc ...the way it was! Art Pepper (Contemporary Records/Mobile Fidelity, UDSACD 2034, SACD/CD; review HERE), where besides the recordings from the session from November 26th 1956 we have some recordings added from later discs. Ayon showed very well that the best recordings are from the session on January 19th 1957 made for the disc Art Pepper Meets..., and the worst from the last, made on February 29th 1960 for the disc Getting’ Together. Without a doubt. But sometimes there was too much of the ‘goodies’ and instruments, which should sound without energy, like those from the disc Intermodulation Bill Evans and Jimmy Hall (Verve/Universal Music Japan, UCCV-9342, CD) were too ‘twisted’, warmed. This is not a big accusation, but you have to remember about it. But when I put on discs where electric guitar plays main role the situation changed completely – things that usually sound ‘thin’ and fragile sounded now with power, depth and might. That was the case with the disc The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking Roger Waters (Sony Music Direct (Japan) Inc., MHCP 691, CD), especially on the piece 5:01 AM, that is opened with a strong and dense guitar of Eric Clapton (the main guitarist on this disc). It sounded fabulous. Still for my system the sound was too close, attacked my senses too strongly, but this was because in my room the loudspeakers are in the half-near field, so really close to the listening position. The same happened with the disc The Trawlerman’s Song EP Mark Knopfler (Mercury Records/Universal Music, 9870986, CD). I call upon this disc from time to time, but it is an example for me how well an electric guitar and a band – of a rock star – can be recorded. And this because all recordings except for the title piece were done live (without an audience) without overdubs and similar. This allowed to keep the emotional part of the music, that defines its perception, and that is killed in mass recordings. In the sound of those discs it could be heard, that probably some things were bigger than in reality, that the middle bass is stronger and deeper, etc. But we have no way of imagining how a recording should sound, as this is a studio product made by electronic and electric instruments, so we can put our disbelief that we have listening to acoustic instruments on a side. And we should do that and see this world in different colors. And this is how this device should be read – it is not universal, because it is also not neutral. The intentions of its creators are shown clearly, and their plans – so I think – were successful in 100%, or maybe even surprised them. The character of the CD-3 comes together with the CD-1, what should not be surprising. The biggest differences are in the even bigger energy coming from the recordings and a deeper, better defined sound stage. I did not mention the latter yet, and I should have done so. The instruments have not a clear structure or a three dimensional drawing. Here it is rather about splendid drawing of that what is behind the instruments, what is in the deep. Every reverb, every effect is shown with a breath taking energy. It could be heard best on the mentioned disc of Waters, recorded using the special system Holophonic, developed by the company Zuccarelli Labs Ltd. This is a kind of ‘processor’ allowing creating real space using only two speakers. And although on his subsequent disc Amused to Death Waters used another famous patent, the QSound system (used also by Sting on his disc Soul Cages), still Holophonic makes tremendous impression. And the way Ayon treated space information allowed the disc to sound the right way. With jazz the space was not that striking, because with not so many instruments it is them, and their drawing that make the transmission. Anyway, I hope, that you now have the right idea about the unit. I am thinking, to what extent the tube rectified power supply is responsible for this sound. I had similar impressions listening to the Jadis system JD1 MkII+JS1 MkIII (test HERE), where the tube is used only to stabilize the current rectified in solid state elements. Not fully, but a bit similar. Ayon adds much more energy to the sound, and in direct comparison most players will seem weak and shaggy. This has its back draws, I wrote about them, but it will also allow to build a system around the CD-3 that once accepted will stay with us forever. DESCRIPTION The CD-3 player from the Austrian company Ayon is composed of two enclosures – one contains the complete player and the other the power supply. The chassis with the player looks identical as the CD-1 (test HERE). The whole is made from very thick aluminum plates with rounded edges. In the front we have only a thin line with a mirror glass covering the display. It is a pity that it is not bigger. Interestingly it has HDCD logo on it – maybe this option is prepared for future players, or it only means, that such a multifunction display was available. The display can be dimmed or switched off from the remote control. This is nicely connected to the LED in the power supply – it dims and switches off in conjunction with the display. A little thing but a nice one. On the top we have an aluminum collar surrounding the opening for the disc. The CD-3 is a toploader. The disc is placed directly on the motor shaft and clamped by a magnetic puck. And the whole is covered by an acrylic element with a handle in the middle. The mentioned ‘plate’ rests in the mentioned collar. In front of it we have a row of metal, red lighted buttons operating the drive functions. On the back we see nicely looking RCA line outputs, and a pair of balanced XLRs. There is also a RCA digital S/PDIF output. And next to it a multi pin solid socket to connect the short cable coming from the power supply. It is a pity that the cable is so short – it necessitates placing the devices on top of each other. I know, that prolonging cables, even power supply cables, does not better the sound, but the power supply could have been placed further away. In the power supply enclosure we have an IEC socket with a mechanical power switch and a red light showing the desired polarization of the AC supply. Both products are supported by very solid, aluminum feet with many rubber half-sphere supports. The device can be remote controlled by a nice, metal unit. The inside looks completely different than the CD-1 – it does not have to have the power supply inside. Almost the whole is cover by a high quality, red PCB, so the drive PCB coming from Sony (with the KSS-213 laser) is not visible. It is visible that the CD-1 cannot be upgraded to CD-3 – a pity. The circuit is very clean. The drive is controlled by a big IC – the microprocessor. Next to it we see a D/A converter, the Cirrus Logic CS4398 – a unit that is a sigma-delta multibit 24/192 converter, that can also decode a DSD stream from a SACD disc. It has a nice dynamics on a level of 120dB and a theoretical resolution of 20bit. Company materials talk about upsampling to 24/192, but I have not noticed anywhere an IC that could be responsible for that – it may be on the other side of the PCB. The signal from the converter flows to Burr-Brown OPA2604 used in the I/V conversion. And here it gets interesting, there is something crucial for the behavior of the device – the circuits for the balanced and unbalanced outputs are independent from each other. Behind that we have a bank of polypropylene capacitors from SRC (12 pieces) and the Electro-Harmonix tubes 6H30 working in the amplifying and buffer sections. And in the balanced and unbalanced section we have two of such tubes. The outputs are keyed by relays – separate for RCA and XLR outputs. In the sound path precise, metalized resistors were used. Each section is accompanied by additional voltage stabilizers – the power supply supplies nine different voltages, that run through inductive elements first and then are filtered in small Rubycon capacitors. The power supply is much heavier than the player, although the latter is not very light either. It is described as “Tube Power Supply”, but this is not fully true – we have nine power supplies, and only one – for the anode voltage of the tubes in the player – is ‘tubed’, the rest is solid state. Regardless of the nomenclature, it must be said, that there is much happening inside the power supply. The whole is filled with a PCB and transformers – we have two, splendid double ‘C’ core type ones, shielded with copper plates and a big choke between them. The latter is used to power the tubes in the player, and the voltage is rectified by a Chinese tube of the 6Z4 type. This is important – it is not a replacement for the American 6Z4 tube, known as type 84, because this is a miniature, 7-pin, indirectly heated tube – a full period low power rectifier. Other sections received solid state rectifiers, visibly chosen looking at their function – we have big bridges for heaters, Shotky diodes and standard diodes. There is a lot of capacitors (22), most of them being Rubycons. Directly behind the power socket we have a ‘double Pi’ filter. All voltages, including anode and heater voltage are stabilized. The quality of the manufacturing is exceptional. Just now I realized, that something like that, for this kind of money, is not possible to be done in Europe or USA. There is no “Made in Austria” marking to be found anywhere, so I think, that the enclosures, and maybe some of the elements are made in China. But the know-how comes from Austria. This is one of the few cases, when only assets were drawn from this business model. If I would not know the price, I would be far from suggesting something like that. How it is in reality – I will never know for 100%. However I think that I am right, because Jason Kennedy, long time editor in chief of the British magazine “Hi-Fi Choice”, begun his review of the Ayon CD-1 player with the following sentence:
CD FROM JAPAN |
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