So, despite the virtual absence of external controls, the D1 is actually a surprisingly versatile unit. Not only will it will play CDs and SACDs, it can be configured for stereo or multichannel applications and it can act as a player or a transport. It is upgradable within that functionality and within its own architecture, so that if technology offers or imposes a change in hardware, it can be instituted with minimum loss of existing investment -- and where digital components are concerned, that’s a rare situation indeed. Just be aware that the USB and Ethernet connections that you can see in the picture of the D1’s rear panel are for system-management and network-control purposes, not connecting external sources.

Still, that’s a pretty fair range of functionality for one box with only two controls. Ah, yes, those controls. CH Precision has opted for a clean, minimalist aesthetic, with sharply defined contours and no instructional labeling to clutter the fascia. Instead they rely on that large, central display to keep you abreast of proceedings. All functionality is accessed through the dual-concentric "rockers" with successive twists and prods producing the desired results (see sidebar), but even once you are familiar with the unit, its operation never quite reaches the level of intuitive, and even after several months with the CH Precision pieces, I still have to think each time I enter a command -- and each time I don’t, I end up with the machine performing some entirely unintended function. Now, ergonomics, style and operational elegance are very individual things. On balance I’ll put up with quite a bit of functional clunkiness to achieve superior looks or performance -- after all, I still play records -- but the D1’s control interface is a step too far for me.

Of course, it wouldn’t matter if all the functionality were duplicated on the remote control. It isn’t. The D1's remote is a five-button affair that allows you to access the basic functions (mute, play or stop discs and skip tracks in either direction). Longer pushes on each button allow you to power the unit up or down, search forward or backward, or reverse signal polarity -- but that’s your lot. The C1's remote is just as basic, and while the company does offer a control app, this will only run on Android phones or tablets, so if you are seriously contemplating the CH route to audio nirvana, first make sure that your upward path won’t be derailed by operational frustrations. Given the sheer complexity of these products and the plethora of options they offer, this is something that CH could and certainly should improve. Fortunately, by its very nature, extending the control app to Apple devices and evolving the user interface shouldn’t be too testing.

Other than its sheer mass, setting up the D1 is perfectly straightforward. One thing was immediately apparent in all the situations and systems that I experienced. The unit sounds much better when solidly coupled to its support. The round feet include O-ring decoupling/surface protectors. Wind the spikes down and you bypass them, as well as being able to level the machine if necessary. The result is crisper definition, greater transparency and quicker, wider dynamics. Move to Nordost Sort Kone TCs and you’ll extend performance even further, as well as add greater weight and color to the mix too. Just remember that if the D1 is standing on its spikes, any attempt to slide it to adjust positioning will dig substantial trenches in all but the hardest supporting surfaces. The C1 is a relative lightweight in comparison, but even it managed to scar one of my Hutter shelves for life.

nce you have the D1 up, running and playing the disc/track you want, how does it sound? Like any modern, configurable digital product that depends on your choice of filter: after extensive listening I opted for the Minimum Phase-Low Ringing option for PCM and Minimum Phase for DSD, which gave the greatest sense of natural flow and musical momentum. The Apodizing and Sharp alternatives sounded progressively higher definition but also more sterile. The differences are subtle, but hear the changes a few times and you’ll soon fix your own preferences.

With that attended to, you can actually get to enjoy some music, so, once again, just how does the D1 sound? In a word, composed. Unflustered and unhurried, the D1 produces music with a sense of stability and contained control -- neat, detailed but a little bland. You never get the feeling that the signal is going to get the system into trouble, but then you never quite get that edge-of-the-seat drama that comes from live events either. The soundstage is pushed back behind the plane of the speakers, with depth, separation, tonality and both dynamic range and resolution compressed. Overall, the performers lack individuality, the performance immediacy. On Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli’s superb concert performance of the Beethoven First Piano Concerto (with Giulini and the Vienna Symphony [Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft UCGG-9044]) the performance lacks its normal drama and impressively emphatic orchestral dynamics, the delicacy, poise, flow and phrasing that characterize the piano part, normally such features of the SHM-SACD.

At the other end of the technological (and musical) scale, the wonderfully uncomplicated, driven R&B of Wilko Johnson and Roger Daltrey on Going Back Home [Chess CRCD2014] sounds compact and solid but without the sheer unstoppable energy that makes this such a great outing. For a disc that marks Daltery’s return to form and might well have marked the great Wilko’s final gig, it sounds flat, lacking urgency, vitality and that slightly abrasive, just inside your personal space immediacy so reminiscent of the Feelgoods at their best. Daltrey might not curl a lip quite as convincingly as Lee Brilleaux, but he’s way better when it comes to holding a tune.

Which leaves the D1 as a stolid, reasonably capable but ultimately unexciting performer. Its shortcomings are far less apparent compared to the run of the digital mill, where it comes across as a stable and controlled player, a safe pair of hands that won’t let you down, but ultimately won’t really excite you either -- which at a touch over £24,000 (including an analog output board) is more than a little disappointing.

Now, under normal circumstances you might wonder why I’d be wasting my time on an expensive but ultimately musically unrewarding product. The answer is simple: although the D1 might not impress as a standalone solution, connect it to the C1 DAC/controller and suddenly it’s all change. Michelangeli recovers that remarkable poise as his hands, almost dancing across the keys, bringing Beethoven’s phrases to vivid life. The Vienna don’t just wake up, they nail it, while you can hear the part that Giulini’s deft direction plays in conjuring the overall drama, creating a performance that fully justifies the explosive applause that greets its conclusion. Meanwhile, the Daltrey/Wilko show finally gets into gear, not just rolling along but propulsively insistent, just up front enough to get right in your face -- right where this music belongs.

How come the dramatic (and believe me, it is dramatic) transformation? To appreciate not just why the differences are so great but why the scale of those differences makes sense, we need to look in detail at not just the C1, but the way it interfaces with the D1. Built into exactly the same chassis as the player and with a central display window that’s the same size, the C1 is virtually identical in appearance to the D1. The only giveaway, when you get up really close, is the outline of the disc drawer in the D1’s display window. Otherwise, the units might as well be identical twins, with only the content of the display to separate them -- assuming that you haven’t defeated it. Internally they’re twins too, with the C1 mimicking the D1’s modular architecture and card-cage construction, with each major circuit block independently realized, in this case including the sophisticated clocking circuit.

Just like the D1, the C1 chassis accepts five slot-in boards, although in this case two slots are pre-designated for the Sync I/O and control boards. The latter is actually used to access the C1 for service and software upgrade purposes, although it can be upgraded to include LAN functionality so that the unit can become a network player. The remaining three slots can each house a digital, asynchronous-USB or analog-input board as required. Each digital board offers four inputs (AES/EBU, TosLink optical, S/PDIF on RCA and CH-Link). The analog board offers a pair each of balanced and single-end inputs. With the three available slots, in most systems it’s tight but doable, especially as the network option effectively duplicates the USB input for file replay -- and is certainly considered the preferable option by CH Precision. When it comes to outputs, you get one pair of single-ended RCAs and one pair of balanced XLRs, spread across two cards and equivalent to the D1’s dual-mono analog output option.

Internally, you’ll find a few more significant differences, mainly in the type and configuration of the DAC. Where the D1 uses a pair of Delta-Sigma chips, the C1 uses two pairs of Burr-Brown PCM1704s in a fully differential array. This in turn feeds a high-current, fully differential output stage, via a wide-bandwidth current-to-voltage stage and a fully discrete, feedback-free low-pass filter. The defeatable volume control (should you want to use the C1 as a standalone DAC) is a sophisticated hybrid digital/analog design. The dual-mono DSP chips used for the digital-volume scaling are also responsible for the conversion of incoming DSD to PCM for subsequent decoding and synchronous upsampling of signals to 705.6 or 768kHz. The two clocks (22.5792MHz for 44.1kHz and multiples, 24.576MHz for 48kHz and multiples) are located immediately adjacent to the DAC chips and run from their own dedicated and galvanically isolated supply. The analog inputs are passed through their own A-to-D chip slaved to the DAC’s master clock, which passes a DSD2x-resolution signal through dual-mono DSP chips into the DAC. This allows the C1 to process analog signals using the same switching, volume control and output stage it employs for digital sources. Converting analog inputs to digital and back again might seem perverse, but let’s not forget that it’s exactly what happens in the remarkably impressive Wadax Pre 1 Mk 2. CH Precision is not alone in treading this path, or in making it work.

Viewed overall, the C1’s internal architecture is a massively more sophisticated and heavily engineered solution than the onboard decoding and analog output installed in the D1, which goes a long way to explain the sonic differences -- but doesn’t quite tell the whole story. Connecting the D1 to the C1 creates two additional options. The first is the proprietary CH-Link connection, an £800 umbilical with multipin edge connectors at each end that passes the digital signals (including DSD) directly from the D1 to the DAC in the C1 as well as control data between the two. The second is the Sync I/O clocking board that allows you to slave the D1 to the master clock in the C1, theoretically eliminating jitter from the data transfer. Both have a profound impact on musical performance. CH makes considerable claims for the overall linearity and temporal accuracy of the PCM-based decoding and output stage of the C1, along with its lack of high-frequency overshoot or ringing and its wide dynamic range. When listening to the D1/C1 pairing, those are claims you have to take seriously.

If you want proof of this particular pudding, look no further than the strident, off-key interjections that punctuate the open piano passage of the Beethoven. The D1/C1 pairing deliver a stark, musically effective contrast, itself a stark musical contrast to the clanging discord that I’ve heard set off the Wilson Alexia tweeters driven by the dCS Vivaldi stack. One of the key indicators that I listen for when assessing any piece of equipment is its ability to separate different performances or discs of the same work. It’s a little like asking an actor to run through different characters or accents: can he take on a different persona, a different voice, or is he simply himself -- is he an Andy Serkis or Timothy Spall, or is he Harrison Ford or (Lord help us) Sly Stallone. When it comes to digital source components, few have made the differences as obviously apparent as the CH Precision combination (or system). If you want musical vocabulary, diction, accent and grammar, then look no further.

Let’s use the Dvorak Cello Concerto as an example. Start by comparing the JVC XRCD version of Piatigorsky’s reading with Munch and the BSO [JVC JMCXR-0014] to the RCA SACD issue of the same recording [RCA 82876 66375 2]. The XRCD offers a nice sense of easy flow and musical momentum, but it is also distant, warm and wooly, with a flattened soundstage that lacks air and immediacy -- especially when compared to the Living Stereo LP. Switch to the SACD and the superiority is brutally apparent. From the first notes the expansive soundstage is closer and far more clearly defined, with a sense of dimensional coherence that simply escapes the XRCD. Instrumental placement and separation are far better and more natural, as are tonality, texture, dynamics and tempo. The combination of transparency and immediacy generates a real sense of presence, that elusive quality that makes recorded performances convince.

If you ever wanted a slam-dunk case for SACD’s superiority here it is in a two-disc nutshell. Except that things aren’t quite that simple. There’s no question about the sonic superiority of the SACD, but what about Piatigorsky’s performance? Time to reach for a few alternatives.

First up, Jean-Guihen Queyras recorded in 2005 by Harmonia Mundi with Jirí Belohlávek and the Prague Philharmonia [HM SACD HMC 901867]. On first hearing, it’s easy to dismiss the Queyras performance as lacking the body, power and drama of the vintage RCA, but it’s worth persevering. Harmonia Mundi’s recording reflects modern techniques and style, with a tighter focus on and separation of instruments, a leaner, less sumptuous overall balance. It might rob the opening bars of some of their dramatic bombast, but by the time you reach the second movement, which requires greater delicacy and sensitivity in its playing, the fineness and poise of Queyras’s line becomes a thing of beauty. Overall, the orchestral coherence and Piatigorsky’s phrasing carry the day, but the HM disc certainly shows another side to this work: more intellectual, less romantic and certainly worthwhile.

Which brings us to that other audiophile contender, Starker and Dorati on Mercury. This time let’s limit the options to the original CD issue [Mercury 432 001-2], the subsequent SACD [Mercury 475 6608] and the LPCD [Hugo 480 613-9] -- there are others, but these are the ones that matter. With the original CD issue, the presentation and performance are immediately recognizable to anybody familiar with the record. It’s bigger, bolder, more driven and far more dramatic than the RCA offering, with a presentation that favors body and impact over spatial coherence. The result can be a bit clumsy in places, lacking the grace, inner detail and dynamic shadings that characterize the LP, but it’s undeniably impressive and musically engaging. In comparison, the SACD is leaner, cooler and almost stilted, lacking the coherence that comes with the RCA SACD and the sheer weight and momentum that you get from the Mercury CD. It’s a pared-away, almost skeletal presentation that suffers in temporal terms too, sounding angular and mechanical -- definitely a poor second to the standard CD.

By the time you reach the second movement you’ve lost interest in the SACD, but the standard CD makes a fascinating contrast with the RCA SACD and also the LPCD. The Mercury CD sounds more muscular and less lyrical than Piatigorsky on the RCA SACD, almost as if illuminated in the thinner, brighter light of morning, rather than the softer shades of evening. On this basis, you’d have to conclude that Piatigorsky is more in sync with the music than Starker, whose reading is more literal and far less evocative. That is, until you play the LPCD. Not only does this match the body, drama and energy of the CD, it brings all the dynamic resolution and spatial coherence of the LP. The Mercury recording has never had the same sense of an overarching acoustic space as captured by RCA, but the space and relationships within the orchestra are vividly captured -- and they’re present here on the LPCD. The improvements in separation, tonality and texture are the result of more accurate harmonic resolution and lead in turn to greater temporal sophistication. The performance now has swagger and bravado rather than clumsiness, a sense of restraint to match its more gung-ho moments.

Once again it is the second movement that is truly telling. Starker’s playing never reaches the lyrical heights of Piatigorsky's, but the LPCD makes greater sense of his phrasing and more of his dynamic contrasts. It also gives a real sense of the intensity in his playing, which really ratchets up the drama and presence. Which do you prefer, Starker’s poise, control and lucid lines or Piatigorsky’s more romantic and lyrical style? That’s the whole point: with the best discs of either recording the preferences become purely musical, the recordings a means to that end.

Great, but what does this tell you about the CH Precision duo? First and most important, it underlines the combination’s essential honesty and evenhandedness across formats. Its insight into the quality of discs is explicit, yet it is also perfectly balanced. These various Dvorak recordings demonstrate a number of truths: that different labels have house sounds and that the style of performance and recording evolves over time; that great performers and great performances can sound very different and tell very different stories; that higher resolution is no guarantee of higher quality; and that there’s considerable life in the CD yet. None of this is news, but the CH Precision units make the various cases with an emphatic clarity that banishes doubt and skepticism. They demonstrate just how good a job Mercury did with those early CD issues -- and just how poorly Emil Berliner did with the SACD transfers compared to the work that Soundmirror did on the Living Stereo back catalogue.

What this also suggests is that when it comes to the limits of performance, the recordings are going to be the dominant factor. Where does the D1/C1 pairing fall short compared to the best of the rest? If the large-scale dynamic swings of the Beethoven and Dvorak discs play to its strengths of stability and secure timing, the driving R&B of Wilko to its rhythmic integrity and sense of dynamic purpose, then let’s look at the opposite end of the musical spectrum to see how it fares presented with smaller-scale and more intimate material.

The double, gold CD reissue of Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Song Book [DCC GZS-(2) 1079] offers the perfect window onto the CH Precisions’ way with smaller works. The straight-ahead, up-tempo rhythm of "Too Darn Hot" or simple, sparse progressions of "I Get a Kick Out of You" are handled well enough, but switch to the more complex phrasing of "Anything Goes," "Miss Otis Regrets" or "Let’s Do It" and the sinuous, rhythmic flexibility and natural sophistication that Ella brings to her vocals are diminished, reducing the songs’ sense of natural pace and progression, when compared to the performance of the Wadax Pre 1 Mk 2 or Neodio Origine, which manage a greater sense of communication and intimacy. The CH Precision pieces slow the undulating smooch that underpins "Let’s Do It," diminishing its suggestive sway and the equally suggestive hesitations that Ella introduces into the lyric.

This level of rhythmic subtlety is where the D1/C1 pull up short of the fluid ease of the very best performers in this regard. Likewise the dirty groove that anchors the Art Pepper track "Las Cuevas De Mario" (Smack Up [Analogue Productions CAPJ 012]) loses its smut and all gets cleaned up; your mother might approve, but if this is your staple musical diet, I’m not sure you will. This isn’t about pace, fast or slow; it’s about variation. It’s almost as if the CH units’ adherence to strict meter inhibits rhythmic expression. You’ll not notice it on Beethoven or Bach, indeed quite the opposite. They thrive on the clarity of structure and pattern that results. Likewise, the vast majority of rock and pop is played with aplomb, but where it’s more of a problem is inevitably on more free-form material, with jazz being the obvious case in point.

How big a deal is this? That depends on your musical tastes and susceptibility to the issue. In other words, it’s something to address by listening to your favorite music. For many it will be perceived as a welcome degree of control compared to more-enthusiastic competition; for others, a necessary and acceptable adjunct to achieving the player’s exceptional degree of tonal and harmonic development. Either way there’s no escaping the slightly studied and cerebral presentation that goes with the CH products. It’s not that they’re slow and it’s certainly not that they're dynamically challenged. It’s more a case that they never let go -- which is exactly why one listener will love what the D1/C1 does and another will find himself admiring it, rather than falling in love. Welcome to the ever-shifting reality that is high-end audio.

How best to sum up the CH Precisions’ balance of virtues? Let’s go back to where we started and piano -- but this time let’s take a pair of classic jazz albums, both piano trios, both from the early 1960s and yet from opposite ends of the stylistic spectrum: Bill Evans’ Sunday at the Village Vanguard [Riverside/OJC20 140-2] and Oscar Peterson’s We Get Requests [Verve 521 442-2]. Playing them back to back on the C1/D1 is an illuminating process, both when it comes to contrasting the performers and understanding the player. The CHs’ crisp, unforced, clarity brings a definite quality to Evans’ staccato playing, capturing his coupled notes and their weighting, especially when he makes space for Scott LaFaro’s extended bass runs, an element that especially benefits from the note-to-note stability and precision that come with the CH units. It’s almost as if they are concentrating on the notes themselves and the crucial spaces between them, rather than the musical lines that flow through them. Thus, Evans’ couplets and shorter note sprays are beautifully rendered, but at some expense to the sense of overall shape and melody, while his longer lines on a track like "Alice" are notably more lively and engaging.

Move on to the Peterson and it’s a whole different picture. His busier, more continuous lines are more fluid and give the tracks more shape, the album greater overall coherence. It’s almost as if by joining the dots himself, he’s saving the system from having to do it for you. But once again, the FIM version of this disc [LIM K2HD 032] displays a startling degree of superiority over the standard issue, a timely reminder of the brutally frank, ungarnished musical presentation of the CH Precisions. When it comes to phrasing and melodic shape, the CH pairing is handily bettered by the almost analog-like reproduction of the significantly more costly Wadax, but also by the significantly more affordable Jeff Rowland Aeris. However, the latter doesn’t even come close in terms of definition or the anchored sense of absolute stability engendered by the CH. It’s these three qualities that characterize the C1 and D1 used in tandem: clarity, stability and control. What you have to gauge is how they balance against the sense of musical line, flow and expression -- and how comfortable you are with where they sit on the definition/musicality continuum. It’s tempting to say just left of center, but that’s on my scale, and when it comes to this measure, each listener sets his own end-stops. If my natural leanings are to the right (at least in this context), then the D1 and C1 are about as far left as I’d be happy to go: musical engaging enough to genuinely satisfy but with the added bonus of utter imperturbability and an almost forensic level of sonic insight. For me, the CH combination delivers its stability and resolution at lower cost (monetarily and musically) than the other extreme-definition options that I’ve used.

Mentioning (the not inconsiderable) question of cost brings me to perhaps my greatest personal frustration with the D1 and C1 pairing. Put simply, it is that they are such a successful pairing. The C1 is impressive on its own as a DAC/controller, but its performance with other transports, such as those from Wadia and CEC, definitely loses the musical authority and explicit confidence that come with the D1 and CH-Link. I was examining these units as a disc-replay solution and for a listener wed to USB or LAN file replay, then the C1 makes a much stronger case as a standalone or interim purchase. But coming from the other digital direction, the logical stepping stone would be to start with the D1 as a standalone unit -- a role in which it gives too much away, musically speaking, at its elevated price. It’s somewhat ironic, given the modular nature of the components themselves, but the D1 makes much more sense as a transport than it does as a player -- which does rather undermine the step-by-step approach to building a CH system, committing the purchaser to the combined cost of a D1 and C1 together, which will put them beyond many listeners’ consideration. Having said that, other similar systems from the likes of dCS and Esoteric will weigh just as heavily on your wallet. I just wish, on a purely personal level, that the D1 player was as much of a star at its price as the D1/C1 combination so demonstrably is at theirs, but perhaps that’s asking too much.

The other point worth making is that the way in which CH units combine to create a symbiotic whole extends beyond the D1 and C1 into their complete system solutions. Add the A1 amplifiers to the mix and the sense of musical coherence takes another major step forward. Use the amps with other line stages and source components and as impressive as they are, they lose color and dexterity, diminished in terms of musical articulation and fluency. Reunite them with the D1 and C1 and the whole blossoms together, the amps starting to breathe while the D1 and C1’s musical rigor suddenly starts to pay serious dividends. Rather like the Mark Levinson Reference components from years back, the results may not be perfect, but the system gets way more right than it does wrong and definitely makes for musically satisfying listening -- at a slightly frightening price. Also like the Levinson units, the CH equipment sounds substantially better running balanced -- which rather raises the question, Why isn’t there an analog input board offering two sets of XLRs?

t the end of the day, there is an element of risk in the CH Precisions’ essential honesty. Indifferent recordings will be shown in all their hideous, naked glory -- not unlistenable, but the flaws will be only too apparent. Of course, the flip side is that great discs sound genuinely fantastic. Let’s face it, you don’t get much more hackneyed than We Get Requests, yet playing the FIM silver CD on the D1 and C1 was both a (guilty?) pleasure and a reminder as to why this recording is as popular as it is. Somehow this really seems to fit the CH ethos: The kind of customer who will appreciate and purchase these products, revel in their intellectual rigor, enjoy the almost infinitely configurable nature of their user interface and extreme flexibility is exactly the same customer who will diligently search out the best discs and the best performances.