Arcam DiVA CD73 and DiVA CD192 CD players.

Distributor: Audiophile Systems, 8709 Castle Park Dr., Indianapolis, IN 46256; 317/841-4100; www.audiophilesystems.com

Price: $699 (DiVA CD73), $1699 (DiVA CD192)

Source: Distributor Loan

In my home, good ole' red book CD playback is here to stay. My collection of plain vanilla CDs numbers in the thousands, and I add to it almost on a daily basis. I'm likely not alone in my addiction to these archaic silver discs because 90% of new releases are CD-only, and the used CD market is thriving thanks to CDs being released in this format for over twenty years and counting. I own a bunch of SACDs, and I think they're great, but relatively few of my favorite titles are available on this format, and even if they were available on the new formats I'm nowhere near financially capable of replacing them all on SACD. I own not a single DVD-A. As far as them gaining widespread acceptance, as per Gramophone magazine, these two more than five-year-old formats "remain little more than an intriguing novelty for the aware, and largely unknown to the majority of the music-listening public."

The mainstream seems to think single-CD players are meant only for portable units only, as multi-disc changers and DVD players that also play CDs are the norm. And since it is assumed by the majority of the equipment buying public that the sound quality of these players is pretty much the same, I can see why most just go out and purchase a multi-disc DVD player when looking for a new player.

For us audiophiles that have huge CD collections, we're in it for the long haul, and most don't think twice about using a single-disc dedicated CD player. In spite of the mass-market trends, many high-end manufacturers have come to realize that audiophiles want this type of player. Since is seems like it is complicated (and expensive) to make a multi-format player without compromising the quality of basic CDs, many companies are introducing new CD-only players, and Arcam's DiVA CD73 and CD192 are two of the most impressive of the "affordable" bunch.

Admittedly, both these CD players are for audiophiles only. Any music listener who does not consider sound quality the most important feature will find these players lacking. They only play one disc at a time, their displays are kind of small, and unlike my Sony DVD player the disc starts over once the "stop" control is activated. The Sony starts playing where it left off as long as it remains plugged into the wall outlet, where the Arcams need to be put on pause if you wish to do that, with the motor still spinning while it's waiting to go again. There are no bells and whistles at all with the Arcams, just great sound quality. And that's all that counts, doesn't it? For those who do not think there is a difference in sound quality between well-built players, all they have to do is spend some time with either of these machines.

It is hard to believe that the DiVA CD73 is Arcam's lowest-priced CD player. According to Arcam's literature, the CD73 includes a 24-bit DAC from Wolfson MicroElectronics, plus a double-sided, through-hole-plated motherboard and a low-noise toroidal power transformer. Special attention was paid to grounding and power supplies. The CD73 can be upgraded to the CD82 or the CD192 by the factory at any time.

The sound of the CD73 was instantly recognizable as a cut above any CD player I've ever had in my home. A/B comparisons to the more costly resident Perpetual Technologies upsampling/DAC combination were practically a waste of my time. The PT combo was my reference for a few years, and even though other players came and went, I always turned to this for critical listening. The Arcam was noticeably better the moment it started playing. I thought perhaps skeptics might think I was only hearing a volume difference as my levels weren't perfectly matched, but this was not the case--the Arcam sounded superior even when its volume was set lower than the competing player. I could even clearly hear the difference between the players from another room. I've got better things to do with my time than perform A/B/X comparisons with a player that is clearly better than what I had on hand. And compared to the multi-format Sony player I have? 'Not even close.

The CD192 is even better than the CD73. After about a month with the CD73 I hooked up the new player, and as good as the 73 was, in comparison, the 192 seemed as if it had removed a layer of tint from the sonic windows of my system. It was quite dramatic. I would like to say that this player had a euphonic sound, but that might infer that the sound was less than transparent, I just don't know how to describe its sound any other way other than it just "sounded good". It was just that even CDs with mediocre mastering became so much more listenable. One has to remember that I'm used to clean LPs played on a near state-of-the-art player, live performances, and mic feeds, and to consider CD sound "sweet" sounding is something that has been alien to me other than a select few CDs over the years. I felt I can listen to just about any CD and feel I'm hearing exactly what not only what the artist intended me to hear, but what sounds like real music made my real musicians in my listening room--via an ordinary CD.

According to Arcam, they achieve this sound in the DiVA CD192 by incorporating their new upsampling "MultiDAC Module", with an Analog Devices sample rate converter used to upsample the 16-bit/44.1 kHz CD data to 24-bit/192 kHz data. Although this cannot add new information to that already on the CD, this technique "allows much gentler filters to be used downstream with a palpable improvement in sound quality". Four Wolfson WM8740s running at 192 kHz are used for the digital to analogue conversion process.

I guess one of the first things I noticed about both the Arcam players, but especially the 192, were their fabulous soundstage. I was suspicious, I thought that perhaps Arcam was playing around with the phase relationships of the channels or something--why should these players sound so much better to what I'm used to hearing? But after a little (actually, more than a little) research I found that their sound is the result of good engineering and design, and after years of building really nice players they've hit up what is probably as good as I'm even going to hear CDs sound in my system.

One CD that I listened to quite a bit of when auditioning these players and comparing them to others was jazz pianist Uri Caine's album of Mahler arrangements, Primal Light. It's not the best recording in the world; it sounds as if it was recorded in a studio that used inexpensive multi-track digital tape recorders such as Alesis ADATs or Tascam DA-88s. But it is a decent recording, and I'm so familiar with it that with this disc that I can hear even slight differences in CD players when auditioning it. But through either of these players their sonic superiority was so obvious that squinting my ears to hear this difference was hardly necessary. Instruments took on a palpability that was just not present before. The soundstage, even though it was a studio manipulation, had so much more width and depth than before it sounded as if it were made during a different recording session. Through the Arcam 192 the cymbals were a bit brighter than the 73, Dave Douglas's trumpet had more presence, the bass went lower, and the soundstage was just a bit deeper and brighter.

On many recently released rock albums I find the mastering to the CDs to be lacking, that is one of the reasons why I usually search out a vinyl copy, and if it is available and affordable I usually buy it. I don't know why I never bothered picking up a vinyl copy of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I guess I just never got around to it. The mastering on this CD is not the worst, but it is by no means the best. And through every other CD player that I have had in my home since I have owned it, I could never perform, any serious "audiophile-type" listening sessions. With either of the Arcams I could hear what Jeff Tweedy and company set out in the studio to assemble this album of quirky pops songs. I still think I would be able to hear into the recording to understand their vision more in depth with an LP copy, but I was finally able to listen to this album while sitting in front of the speakers without taking it out of the player before it was over.

Arcam's top-of-the-line CD player is the FMJ CD33. This nearly $800 more expensive player improves upon the 192 by using a beefier cabinet and using two power supplies, one for each converter. I suppose with these relatively minor upgrades this is proof that they really can't do much more to improve upon this already excellent player. I know some DIY-audiophiles who use the easily obtainable Dynamat[TM] in-door automobile treatment to line the interior of audio cabinetry to give it a less resonant character, and one could easily do this with either of these Arcam players. It would likely void the warranty, and I don't know how much sonic improvement it would bring about, but it is possible to do. I know in my system improving the power to the entire system by using the PS Audio Power Plant AC regenerators has become the "great equalizer," if you will, making many lower cost pieces of equipment sound exactly like their more expensive brethren simply by hooking it up to these Power Plants. So if you use one of these devices or something similar, or have no problems at all with the power supplied to your home, this point might be moot.

I have a bunch of SACDs in my collection, and of course have longed for a player that reads both SACDs and CD' with the quality that I've come to expect from the very best. But the only players that I've seen, so far, that can do both formats justice are very, very expensive. I'm not ready to spend that kind of money yet on digital playback. I'm hoping one day that there will be a player that can do this at an affordable price, but until then, an Arcam player will have to suffice that does as good a job with plain old CDs that I've ever heard. And that is not such a bad thing.