The Audio Beat - CH Precision D1.5 CD/SACD Player and Transport

CH Precision • D1.5 CD/SACD Player and Transport

by Dennis Davis | December 29, 2022

© www.theaudiobeat.com

Who needs a digital-disc player these days? That is a question I struggled with back in 1983 when a handful of local audiophiles acquired the first commercially available CD player, the Sony CDP-101, and tried to impress their friends with the new toy. It did not sound bad -- that would have been too charitable. It sounded utterly dreadful. After that experience, nothing tempted me to acquire a CD player for another dozen years, and even then I did so under protest, as digital continued to be a poor cousin of analog.

My first capitulation was with a Wadia 8 transport and 15i DAC. The Wadia 8 sported an impressive, massive mechanism that promised an improvement over those used in most CD spinners at the time. The combo was good enough to allow me to start listening to newly recorded music that was only available on CD. The Wadia separates were replaced by an Audio Research CD7 in the hope that a few tubes in the circuit might tame a technology that still, at best, sounded brittle and dry. In the early twenty-teens, things were on the mend, but getting decent CD sound meant pairing something expensive like a CEC CD transport with a Kondo DAC. Only the most adventurous audiophiles could risk throwing a massive amount of money into a technology that was still a significant compromise. By the middle twenty-teens, a glimmer of hope was beginning to shine down on audiophiles like me. Wadax started to show signs of becoming the dominant maker in digital replay it has now become. Still, Wadax products were priced out of my reach. But what did start to sound like music was the Neodio Origine, and in June of 2015, the original Neodio CD player became part of my system and has remained there ever since. Save for the Wadax separates, no other digital replay has come close to sounding as musical.

Today, the issue of whether you or I need a CD player requires an entirely different evaluation. Whereas in the 1980s the issue was whether the execrable sound quality merited a purchase, today’s audiophiles instead ask whether there is any need for an optical-disc player at all, considering the availability of file replay and streamed music. Granted, when it comes to streaming music, I remain more an atheist than an agnostic. I have heard almost every streaming solution, most on multiple occasions, and apart from the unaffordable Wadax solution, nothing makes me want to abandon vinyl, let alone optical discs, for downloading or streaming.

One of CH Precision’s earliest products was the D1 CD/SACD player that I first listened to many years ago at the High End show in Munich. At the time, I played CDs at home not because CD playback was a viable sonic alternative to vinyl, but because most new classical music was only available in that format. I was on a perpetual search for a one-box solution for digital playback that would make silver discs palatable. I needed a single unit because the limitations of my own space demanded it and because I gravitate to an aesthetically elegant, less cluttered life. And in the case of CD players, why devote extra space to a medium that is inherently flawed? That said, over the last decade, both the quality of the discs themselves as well as the equipment used to play them have improved dramatically. The D1 sounded promising, but at its cost, I wanted more fulfillment than promise.

The CH Precision D1.5 is an entirely redesigned product rather than an evolution of the D1. As such, a D1 cannot be converted to a D1.5, but CH Precision will give an exchange credit of a little over $20,000 toward the purchase of the new unit. For those who follow technical details, the D1.5 uses Cirrus Logic Wolfson DACs, but that is just a starting point for a highly proprietary CH Precision circuit. The D1.5 includes a flexible range of options, some of which involve the addition of plug-in boards and others that allow the unit to be expanded through add-on power-supply, DAC, and clock-synchronization units. The basic unit, as reviewed here, is the transport mechanism with the addition of a pair of dedicated mono DAC boards using CH Precision’s proprietary PEtER spline filter algorithm ($46,000). Without these DAC boards, the unit functions as a transport only ($41,000). With the boards, it becomes a standalone CD/SACD player with MQA decoding. Although reviewed here as a one-box solution, the unit can be expanded with the addition of an X1 power supply ($17,000), connected to a C1.2 DAC ($36,000 for one or $77,000 for dual mono) and, with the addition of SYNC IO clock synchronization board ($1500), slaved to an external T1 clock ($24,700).

Many manufacturers have moved away from or abandoned SACD playback because of the scarcity of mechanisms that can read SACDs, but CH Precision has gone all in with an extremely robust solution. Dubbed the Mechanically Optimized Reading System (MORSe), the D1.5's high-mass transport mechanism incorporates an optical pickup and motor mounted on a brass sled that weighs over two pounds. That module is separated from the chassis using four alpha-gel isolators and is tuned to bring the resonant frequency down to AC mains frequencies, well below the audible spectrum.

The D1.5's chassis is CH Precision's ubiquitous block of aluminum with a heavy base, adding up to a total weight of about 49 pounds. Unlike many CH Precision chassis, the D1.5's sports a set of concentric-knob controls. Once you have gone into the setup menu to set some basic parameters, almost everything else can be performed by rotating the knobs. The smaller inner knob opens and closes the drawer, and starts and stops play. The outer knob allows movement between tracks. It is simple and intuitive and covers everything you do with regularity. The unit automatically selects between CD and SACD layers and MQA functions. A small remote that docks with magnets on the right side of the unit performs a few simple functions. Additionally, there is a CH Precision app (Android only) to control most any function. I have used the app at shows, and it is quite handy. However, for this review, I relied on manual dexterity.

Setup of the unit was a snap. Leveling was accomplished by adjustable spikes mounted at the four corners of the unit and accessible by cover plates that disappear into the lines of the chassis. The composite aluminum/polymer spikes have replaced earlier steel versions -- they make leveling a cinch and function well as footers. The footprint matches perfectly with a standard HRS base. I tried both single-ended and balanced Nordost Valhalla 2 interconnects and settled on the balanced version. Power was served with a Valhalla 2 power cord. The only tweak I used was placing one HRS damping plate on the D1.5's lid.

The most basic function of a CD/SACD player is to play CDs -- there are so many more of them than SACDs -- so before even considering performance with SACD and MQA, one must ensure that a player does the basics well. My benchmark for CD playback has been the Neodio Origine. Leaving aside SACD and MQA decoding (neither of which can be accomplished with the Neodio), my first stop in evaluating any CD player is how it stacks up against the Neodio with CDs. I always begin with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli’s magical performance, and equally magical live recording, of Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto with Giulini, recorded at Vienna’s Musikverein [Deutsche Grammophon 449 757-2]. I have been seated in several places in that hall and have a fair grasp of what it should sound like. I still remember the first time I heard the recording on the Neodio, and that experience took my breath away. I was listening to it compared to several other players, from Audio Research, Wadia, dCS and others, and nothing else came close to the magically realistic sound produced by the Neodio.

The D1.5 is the first digital player not named Neodio or Wadax to transport me to the Musikverein without leaving my listening room. Its playback of the Beethoven disc is very much like what I hear from the Neodio. I listened to several other familiar discs on both players and could hear slight differences, some in each player’s favor. My overall impression of the D1.5 was that I could be perfectly happy with it as a simple CD player. But, of course, nothing is simple, and the cost of the CH Precision unit is significantly more than that of the Neodio. But all things are not equal, and cost is only one factor.

As I mentioned, the D1.5 can be upgraded in several ways, and I tremble to think of how much better it might sound with just a separate power supply. And, of course, the Neodio and CH Precision units are not equal, in that only one of them can play SACDs and decode MQA. If a player can extract sound from SACD and MQA discs approaching that of vinyl, the obvious comparison of the D1.5 is not the price of other CD players but what it costs to obtain comparable sound with a turntable setup. With that reasonable approach in mind, I tallied up the cost of my turntable, a second tonearm and two most-used cartridges and was not surprised to see that they exceed the cost of the D1.5, even with the add-on power supply thrown in.

But, you might ask, how much better does the D1.5 make SACD and MQA-encoded discs sound over their lowly CD counterparts? While there are occasional discs where the improvements are negligible or totally missing in action, those are the exceptions. In most cases, the D1.5 extracts sound from these formats far superior to that of their Red Book counterparts, and in quite a few cases, sound that takes the digital reproduction close to that of truly exceptional analog. There, I’ve said it, and have not been struck by lightning.

In some ways, SACD is the easiest to figure out. Over the last several years, the question that I ask first is whether the SACD layer sounds better with an SACD player than the CD layer with my Neodio player. Incredibly few players come close to passing this test. Some listeners make the mistake of thinking that SACD playback in any SACD player will automatically sound better than the CD layer played back by the best CD player. Even a cursory comparison of players quickly disproves this idea. One of the reasons I made the Neodio part of my system back in 2015 was that I could not find a unit that played SACDs and bettered the sound of the Neodio’s CD-layer playback. That proposition was destroyed when the Wadax player offered stunning CD and SACD sound, but at a cost well out of my reach. While the price of the CH D1.5 is considerable, the “beginner’s” one-box player is aspirational in a real-world way -- meaning you can buy one without hitting the Super Lotto.

The next test the D1.5 passed with flying colors was its performance with SACD. Obviously, any SACD player should make clear the superiority of sound of a well-mastered SACD. The “well-mastered” limitation applies mostly to older recordings remastered for the hybrid age. Too often the SACD layer of a remastered disc, especially one recorded before the digital era, shows trivial improvement over the CD layer. There are several reasons for this, but I paid little heed to such discs and focused on those that are known to have a legitimate high-resolution layer of high quality.

Unlike a great many SACD players that cannot even make the high-resolution layer outperform the Red Book playback of my reference Neodio Origine, the D1.5 finally brought the promise of SACD sound to a player under a hundred grand. I have compared the Neodio's CD playback with SACD playback from pricey units designed for high-end audio as well as Marantz and Denon multidisc players marketed for video, and I came away with a feeling of ennui. Who needs an SACD player, I thought, if this is all it offers? If SACD playback does not offer something approaching the level of excitement generated by comparing a Red Book CD to an LP, what's the point?

It took little time to hear that the D1.5 was a godsend for those with a significant collection of SACDs. Simply put, the D1.5 provided that jolt of excitement that had been missing from my extensive collection of hybrid discs. First up, I played one of my guilty pleasures, the politically incorrect "Money For Nothing" from Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms [Mercury/Mobile Fidelity UDSACD 2099]. Comparing the CD layer on both the CH Precision and Neodio players was like stepping up from a decent CD to a great LP -- layers of sound, a huge increase in dynamic range and speed, greater depth of field and more detail in the instrumental texture. Switching to vocal recordings, I spun both layers of "You Make Me Feel So Young" from Sinatra’s Songs For Swingin’ Lovers! [Capitol Records/Mobile Fidelity UDSACD 2106], a mono recording from 1956. The CD layer showed the age of the recording, at least that was the impression until the switch from the CD to SACD layer. With the CD layer, when the big band comes on full strength, the sound was smeared and at the same time slightly strident, a quality shared when Sinatra breaks in with a crescendo -- the top end of his voice caused me to wince. On SACD not only did those problems disappear, but I could hear the recording studio around Sinatra, signs of reverb that were indistinct on the CD layer. On top of that, the SACD delivered greater bass solidity.

But what about more complex music? PentaTone, Channel Classics, AliaVox and a handful of other labels have enticed even those like me, without an SACD player in regular rotation, to add hundreds of SACDs to our collections. Rachel Podger’s La Stravaganza [Channel Classics CCS SA 19503] is a critical favorite and a Vivaldi disc I return to often. The D1.5's decoding of the SACD layer improved on what I have heard from CD and SACD playback with other players by removing a slight sheen or edge in the upper range and making an improvement in pacing that, although subtle, makes all the difference, given the delicacy and beauty of the music. I have heard Podger play live a few times, and the slight edge I hear on the CD layer and with other SACD players was not inherent in her style of playing or instrument. Like the stridency I used to hear on early Telefunken records that disappeared over the years with improvements in cartridge and turntable design, the top end of Podger’s recording has a bit of glare on the CD layer that I hear with the Neodio and CH Precision players, and everything else, but that evaporates when the SACD layer is played.

The D1.5 is the first MQA-enabled disc player I have spent any time with. MQA was launched in 2014 and initially applied to music streaming. The technology was promoted at the High End Show in 2015, but the demonstrations were less than convincing. Some commentators hailed it as the second coming, but at the same time a huge controversy broke out on the Internet, claiming that MQA was little more than a scam. Starting in 2017, a trickle of MQA CDs became available. Many UHQCDs (and a smaller number of CDs) are now released with MQA encoding, and I therefore had a ready supply of MQA discs to try with the D1.5, including several of Deutsche Grammophon's recent releases, The Montreux Years series on BMG, and numerous John Coltrane UHQCD titles. The D1.5 decodes both MQA and MQA Studio recordings.

My first listen to MQA discs was Marianne Faithfull’s The Montreux Years [BMG BMGCAT505CD], which I reviewed for The Audio Beat. This series comes from wonderful live performances made at the Montreux Festival, this disc offering the luxury of comparing straight CD to MQA to LP, as BMG began this series with LPs and then quickly added CD/MQA equivalents. Most of the discs in the series boast exceptional sound, and the Faithfull is among the best-sounding. I approached MQA CD with low expectations, but those were quickly shattered: MQA playback makes the regular CD sound a bit sluggish compared to the LP, as if the batteries were running low on the recording equipment. With MQA, the pace seemed to have been repaired and the overall dynamics snapped into place. When I had originally compared the LP to the CD before having access to an MQA-enabled player, it was clear that the CD was a pale version of the analog record. With the D1.5’s exceptional MQA performance, the digital disc is in close contest with the vinyl.

Jazz diehards will also celebrate the D1.5’s unearthing of detail and density of tone with some of their favorites released on UHQCD with MQA encoding. For example, numerous treasures from the John Coltrane catalogue have been introduced over the last couple of years in this new format contemporaneously with well-remastered LPs. John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman [Impulse!/Universal UCCU 40113] is also available on Analogue Productions vinyl; My Favorite Things [Atlantic Records WPCR 18248] is also a two-LP set, mono and stereo, remastered by Kevin Gray; and Giant Steps [Atlantic Records WPCR 18247] an LP also remastered by Kevin Gray. These older titles predate digital recording, so the MQA encoding was not generated at the time of recording and hence there is no MQA Studio option. I have probably heard every studio-sanctioned digital release of these titles, and they have never sounded better than what I heard via the D1.5. The CH Precision player separated out the instruments better, displayed more instrumental texture and nailed the pacing better than I have heard with digital versions of these albums. While the recent and very good-sounding vinyl reissues are even better, the sound of these MQA versions, played back on the CH D 1.5, may give pause to audiophiles wondering if they can get away without a vinyl rig.

Where the CH Precision D1.5 MQA playback really shines, however, is with exceptionally well-recorded classical music, and nothing shines brighter than the Lisa Batiashvili and Daniel Barenboim disc of Tchaikovsky’s and Sibelius’s Violin Concertos. It comes in a standard CD package [Deutsche Grammophon 479 6038] but also in a UHQCD package with MQA encoding [Deutsche Grammophon Uccg-41048 484 2089]. It is a modern recording, made in 2016, and is thus fully MQA Studio. The improvement with the UHQCD/MQA disc is not subtle. The original disc was an exceptional-sounding CD, but the improvements with the MQA version, played on the CH Precision player, are nothing short of stunning. The soundstage opened up and details lost in the digital haze were fleshed out. How much does all this boil down to improvements from the UHQCD manufacturing and how much to the MQA? The newer disc is certainly a significant improvement played on a non-MQA player like the Neodio simply because of the UHQCD manufacturing, but MQA Studio encoding takes it into another league.

Similar if more subtle results can be obtained with instrumental music -- music that does not challenge you with a giant soundstage and complex instrumental textures. Víkingur Ólafsson's new disc titled Mozart & Contemporaries can be found on regular CD [Deutsche Grammophon 486 0525] and HQCD with MQA Studio encoding [Deutsche Grammophon UCCG-45022 486 1645]. The regular CD sounds acceptable, if unremarkable, on both the Neodio Origine and CH Precision D1.5, but the HQCD played back on the D1.5 takes the sound up a notch and reminds me how a piano is constructed. I can tell that the struck piano strings are causing the soundboard to vibrate. I can detect each note’s overtones and recognize that the regular CD is only approximating this result.

The Neodio Origine is an outstanding CD player. Nothing short of the Wadax rig, and now the CH Precision D1.5, has come close to matching or exceeding the Neodio player’s detailed, magical sound. The Neodio’s CD playback is superior to the SACD playback of the vast majority of players on the market. I have been perfectly happy, even smug, with the notion that an SACD player is superfluous to my life, but the D1.5 has convincingly batted that conceit away. The latest CH Precision player, even in its basic one-box configuration, gives me new faith in digital as a legitimate high-end playback medium.

Price: $46,000.
Warranty: One year parts and labor.

CH Precision Sàrl
ZI Le Trési 6D
CH-1028 Preverenges
Switzerland
www.ch-precision.com

The evolution of the CD

The humble CD has evolved since its introduction forty years ago, mostly related to materials and manufacturing refinements. The first of these was the gold disc, which quickly became ubiquitous among high-end/audiophile labels like Mobile Fidelity and DCC -- at least in part thanks to the obvious distinction from "standard" discs. In 2007 Universal Music Japan introduced the SHM-CD (Super High Material), a CD manufactured from a polycarbonate material originally developed for LCD screens. Although SHM-CD struggled to achieve widespread acceptance, it was quickly followed by SHM-SACD, single-layer SACD discs (no CD layer) that would only play on SACD players. Both SHM formats have ultimately achieved a degree of stability and remain particularly popular among Japanese audiophiles (and those US and European listeners happy to mail-order discs from Japan). Hundreds of great titles have been released, although short production runs mean you need to grab them while you can.

Around 2009, First Impressions Music (FIM) released a handful of what it called UD or Ultimate Discs, claiming to correct coding errors at a more stringent level than required by the Red Book standard, and combining that process with better materials than standard CD, consisting of a gold pit layer with the top side coated with a damping compound. Around the same time, Sony began marketing what it called Blu-Spec CD, employing the Blu-ray video disc technology to author CDs. Like FIM’s UD discs, Blu-spec offered improved error correction during manufacturing.

Another and arguably far more significant development also first appeared in 2009, when Memory-Tech began producing optical discs using an optical polymer layer to seal the pits, hand-encapsulated in a laminated glass envelope rather than polycarbonate. Costing in the region of $2000 each and although hardly as fragile as their name implied, these discs were certainly more vulnerable than plastic alternatives. As a result they were sold in massive, rigid cases that did nothing to reduce their perceived value or exclusivity.

At $2000 a disc, glass CD was hardly mainstream, but in 2015 Universal Music Japan introduced the UHQCD, which paired the mechanically superior SHM material with the specially plated pit layer and photo polymer from the luxury discs. Results were impressive and subsequently UHQCD technology was paired with MQA encoding, with many of the previously issued UHQCD discs now being reissued in the MQA-CD format. MQA discs exist in two formats: MQA and MQA Studio. MQA claims to correct timing errors encoded in the original recording process, a function of flaws in the analog-to-digital systems used. An MQA disc involves the encoding of original tapes, either analog or digital where the original A-to-D is unknown. The MQA Studio moniker is used for discs where either MQA encoding was employed for the original recording, or the A-to-D used on the original recording is known, implying a lower level of overall timing error. What both MQA and MQA Studio have in common is that they require an MQA-capable player or DAC to take full advantage of the technology.

-Dennis Davis

Associated Equipment

Analog: Spiral Groove SG1.2 turntable with Centroid tonearm, Lyra Atlas Lambda stereo and Etna mono phono cartridges, Nordost Valhalla 2 tonearm cable, Audio Research Reference Phono 3 SE phono stage.

Preamps: Audio Research Reference 6 SE.

Amplifiers: Audio Research Reference 160S.

Digital: AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt digital-to-analog converter, Neodio Origine CD player.

Speakers: Wilson Audio Yvette.

Cables: AudioQuest Dragon power cords; Nordost Valhalla 2 interconnects, speaker cables and power cords.

Power distribution: AudioQuest Niagara 7000 power conditioner, Nordost Quantum QB8 AC-distribution unit and Qx4 power purifier, Furutech GTX D-Rhodium power outlet.

Supports: HRS RXR rack, MSX Isolation Bases, Damping Plates, and Vortex footers; Neodio Origine B1 supports, Stillpoints ESS rack and Ultra 5 footers.

Accessories: VPI MW-1 Cyclone record-cleaning machine, Disc Doctor cleaning fluid and brush, VPI "magic bricks," Audio Physic cartridge demagnetizer, Shunyata Research Dark Field Elevators, Orb Audio static-charge eliminator, Acoustical Systems SMARTractor, Ortofon DS-3 stylus-pressure gauge, Shakenspin2 wow and flutter analyzer, Starrett No.98-6 machinist's level.