After the development of our MP-DAC we were looking for a good CD-drive. It became obvious that Philips made a very nice mechanical drive system but the electronics suffered, as a lot of players and drives do, of serious jitter. After looking at the circuit diagrams we succeeded in lowering the jitter problem by other ways of decoupling of the digital circuits. A new mains transformer was added with a low impedance output. Also the clock was altered and, last but not least, we added a bottom plate of 20 mm marble (Now the VIB-ONE or -TWO). The output was altered into a 75 Ohm BNC type. Now when connected to a DAC using a good 75 Ohm cable (and BNC connectors at both ends) this drive outperforms a lot of expensive competitors.
We also deliver a complete CD-player. There the same measures were taken and a new output amplifier is inserted. The (Philips) converter chip is extremely well decoupled and also the power supply for the analogue parts is optimized. Although the sound quality of this player is somewhat less than the combination of the drive with our DAC it's performing quite nicely without becoming aggressive at high frequencies and/or explosions in the orchestra.
In the Dutch magazine "Klassieke Zaken" (reviews of classical music) the following article is published. (december 1999)
CD-player which doesn't know it's own mother!
by Jan van Gelderen
The phenomena is typical English but also in Holland one may find (very) small companies where specialized electronic engineers with perfect ears are busy on getting a better musical performance. In Zaandam very beautiful loudspeakers are produced, In the southern part of the country (near Philips Eindhoven) granite loudspeaker cabinets are made which also give an excellent sound. And in the Western part of Rotterdam APN constructs and delivers revolutionary good sounding amplifiers and cheap though als good performing loudspeakers. Now they added a CD-player to their program, a player which doesn't recognize it's own mother.
Hawk got a not bad, but also not remarkable CD-player, the Philips CD-753 out of a shop and modified it. The result of all the cutting, glueing and soldering job on the inside of this black box is that we now have a CD-player which performs remarkably.
It's even castrated because no sound comes out of it thanks to the cutting of the D/A-converter. One has to connect it to a separate DAC with a special interconnect. What remained is the very good Philips drive. This is the CDM-12 which also can be found in players from Meridian, Musical Fidelity, Technics and Marantz.
Though this might become too technical I want to tell you what happened on the dissecting table so "things started sounding better". Everyone can understand the marble platter mounted under the bottom. (Now replaced by the Vib-One or Vib-Two.) This takes care of the unwanted vibrations in the tin cabinet deteriorating good sound. Also added is lots of tar padding (bitumen pads) on the inside with the same purpose. Next target was the power supply. A nice (too) big transformator accompanied by electrolytic capacitors and some more of those things takes care of a digital power supply easily delivering the needed power for the digital circuitry - like a swallow careless picking up a dragon-fly in the air - so no sound is obstructed by breathlessness. All circuits got extra decoupling, the victim got a new digital output of the BNC-type. The four Philips dampers underneath disappeared in the dustbin and were replaced by three (!) types without a brand name. You know: a table with three legs never wavers. What rested are the all the functions built in by Philips such as fade and programming and also the remote control.
This drive will be sold for six hundred and fifty Euro's. You might connect it to any commercial converter, but with the other Hawk items you'll have it for a reasonable price. A BNC interconnect costs Euro 102,- and the 24-bits DAC is available for Euro 1205,-. For Euro 1855,- you may hear a cello player gasp, that one boy-soprano from the choir in the Mattheus Passion sing off key and the valves of the clarinet sticking. We listened to this combination.
At this moment Hawk is still working on a complete CD-player including the DAC and output amplifier. That model may be connected without any problem directly to your amplifier and it will cost Euro 793,-. That version is not tested (yet).
More players are available with these analytic properties. The marbled Philips adds things which I seldom heard and for sure not for those prices. The driving energy in contrabasses for instance, not to be confused with the panting energy, booming, for instance from a thirteen year old Golf near you at the traffic light.
We're talking about the reproduction of lows where basses are not rolling over each other and are hampering each other, but separated voices producing a wide sound image. For instance take the nasty Moderato con moto from Sjostakowitsj's third string quartet played by the Borodin Quartet an analog recording on BMG 74321 40713. The contrabass grumbles, the cello beats and grunts and violins try to proclaim something lovely. A player able to swing this out of your loudspeakers in good relationships deserves a 10. This set does it and probably this is caused because they fully eliminated the feared jitter problem out of Eindhoven (Hometown of mother Philips).
Let's give it a trial with the clavecymbel played by Gustav Leonhardt (Scarlatti, Sony Classical, CB-601) which always made me think of a rattling jam-jar with nails. Now the lows show to full advantage and are in harmony with the higher keys. Nails disappeared and one can 'feel' the musical tension.
We dare to play the CD with the panting voice of the past millenium, Celia Bartoli in Vivaldi (Decca 466 569). This dame stays decently on the spot in the center of the sound stage, a sound stage wider and deeper than the loudspeaker placement would suggest. This utterly difficult to reproduce recording shows me for the first time that the extreme highs, the tremolo in the voice, have nothing to do with hysteria but everything with music.
All on a row
What will be the result with a row of singers and speakers? For instance with l'Histoire du Soldat by Stravinsky with from left to right Gérard Depardieu, Guillaume Depardieu and story teller Carole Bouquet (Auvidis V 4805). Everybody is in the right position, and for the first time I don't need a textbook to understand the text litterally. The reproduction of the voices is extra ordinary. The proportions in sound between the violin in front of the little orchestra (Shlomo Mintz), soloists and orchestra is just as meant by the recording engineer.
Just take the Wiener Philharmoniker with the Stateopera Choir in Alban Berg's Wozzeck (DGG 423 587) and the stage is wider than the street, deeper than the courtyard. Again everything is understandable, one sees the soloists moving across the stage, choir, orchestra and soloists relate to each other. This player really plays opera.
Concluding - big orchestra, small ensemble, the human voice - this reproducttion is without emphasis, it's ease and precision which in the beginning bewilders and thereafter makes you forget that it's just two loudspeakers reproducing it. The obvious handles when writing about audio such as the behaviour of the basses, the mids and the highs are no longer valid. From low to high no coloration is discernable, the entire keyboard has the same absolute neutrality.
Talking of Euro's, the price/quality relationship. I know much more expensive players with lesser performance.
The other components
This player should be connected to an excellent amplifier and perfect loudspeakers. We used the P-11 control amp from the same company (now replaced by the P-12) and at first connected this with an expensive integrated amp via the tape input. In this way the amplifier behaves as a simple power amp. This resulted in a big advantage over the original combination, spaciousness and definition are better. A combination with Hawk's own power amps such as the stereo transistor amplifier A18 or the hybrid (with valves and fet's) monoblocks A50 are more in favour of the qualities of the CD-drive and converter.
In Rotterdam-on-the-Meuse tone controls, flashing lights and brushed aluminum cabinets are not accepted. Barely the most essential knobs are there. They say that everything else added will deteriorate the sound quality.
Hawk's loudspeakers are remarkable - cabinets out of PVC tubes. Especially the spaciousness of the reproduced sound may be praised, but they have more qualities......
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