Disc Players

It’s tempting to imagine a Frankenstein-like cry of ‘At last our creature is complete!’ emanating from the Cambridge HQ of dCS. The arrival of the company’s Varèse CD/SACD transport, retailing for £32,500, should come as no surprise to followers of the company’s flagship digital solution [HFN Feb ’25]. Bringing the complete Varèse ‘stack’ to a total of six units – the User Interface, Core, Master Clock and dual Mono DACs – the eagerly anticipated Transport also lifts the all-up price just north of £260,000.

Our feature review series has been planned to include audiophile and flagship CD models, and that is certainly an accurate description of the magnificent-looking Yamaha CDX-10000. This forms a major component in a new series of limited edition audio separates which have been designed and built with virtually no concession to cost in celebration of Yamaha’s centenary. This covers the period 1887 to 1987, and the models are appropriately entitled the ‘Centennial Edition’.

You might be forgiven for thinking – bearing in mind the product name – that the Unico CD Uno from Italy’s Unison Research is ‘just’ a CD player. Yet on its website the Italian manufacturer gives it the title of ‘hybrid DAC with CD transport’, while legends on the player itself read ‘Valve CD Player’ and ‘Digital Sound Processor’. So, yes, this is a CD player with a little more to it than some rivals, including a switchable tube/hybrid output stage, USB DAC, and even built-in Bluetooth streaming. With all this, and the heavyweight build, its £2700 asking price seems far from unrealistic.

At the tail end of 2020, when Marantz released its Model 30 amplifier [HFN Jan ’21], the name paid homage to the brand’s Model 1 preamp of 1954 while the chassis styling nodded at past Marantz designs from hi-fi’s ‘golden age’. However, this was not a case of the New York-born (but now Japan/California-based) company jumping headfirst into the so-called ‘nostalgia economy’ with a retro/vintage-inspired product, more the first step in a complete overhaul of its brand image. Since then, there have been various additions to the new-look Model catalogue, but all have sat below the Model 30. Until now...

You don’t have to be a marketing analyst with a subscription to the Financial Times to understand why SACD might win the format war. Clearly, the SACD crew has delivered more hardware and (most importantly) in the order of ten times more software than DVD-Audio, according to the estimates of music vendors I’ve canvassed. All of which makes the arrival of a high-end SACD player with a mid-range price point something worth considering.

Rotel has crowned its new Michi Q5 a 'Transport DAC', which strikes us as a somewhat vague description of what is, first and foremost, a CD player. Yes, it has digital inputs to make wider use of its onboard DAC, plus digital outputs, but just one glance at the Q5's distinctive top-loading drive mechanism – plus the fact it resides under the 'CD player' tab on Rotel's website – tells you this is a unit primarily aimed at silver disc lovers.