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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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Digital Drive Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it. |
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In Reply to: What makes a Rega Planet "Analog-like"? posted by The Rev on February 22, 2007 at 16:03:14:
Back when it was launched I wrote the world's second printed-mag review of the Planet (we got beaten by the UK's What HiFi with one week).I assessed the Planet in a group review, against 3 other like-priced machines, and using careful level matching. Compared to all of these the Planet simply sounded warmer and darker. Perhaps of lesser resolution (especially in the treble), but ultimately musically (much) more rewarding. The others sounded thin and grey or overly-colourful and busy (e.g. Marantz CD-63/67)
Later circuit analysis revealed that the Planet used a cheap Burr-Brown delta-sigma DAC chip, used in a slightly unconventional configuration (if I remember correctly, on-chip opamp DC levels were decoupled to Vcc instead of Ground). It interfaces with a single Sanyo chip that contains a number of opamps and voltage regulators (for these opamps, and for the DAC chip itself). This chip was probably originally designed to allow greater circuit densities in portable players. No specific care towards supply voltage quality, lots of crummy electrolytic caps and ceramic caps in the signal path.
In short: according to standard high-end audio design lore the Planet's design was a pile of crap.
But it sounded good.
I later on bought a Planet, and after many years modified the output stage somewhat, bringing more clarity without losing the musicality.
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Follow Ups
- Re: What makes a Rega Planet "Analog-like"? - Werner 05:36:35 02/23/07 (2)
- a pile of crap that sounds good - Frihed89 02:26:23 02/25/07 (0)
- Re: What makes a Rega Planet "Analog-like"? - The Rev 10:31:13 02/23/07 (0)
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