Description

This is not your ordinary CD player, it´s a pure audio CD player. Designed, developed and manufactured in Denmark, the CD-2 provides the unsurpassed performance which is expected from a Lyngdorf Audio product. With the experience gained from the multiple award winning Lyngdorf Audio digital amplifiers and CD players, this is aimed at being one of the best sounding pure audio CD players on the market.

The CD-2 is built as if it was a heavy amplifier. A thick vibration free aluminum chassis frame with vibration damped lid gives it a tank-like construction.

It is equipped with Intersample Clipping Correction (ICC) which restores clipped samples back to their original shape. Low-noise design techniques are applied to upsample the digital output, and the D/A converter section is the same as in the legendary Millennium MK IV amplifier and it is being used to drive a high quality, single ended and balanced output stage.

The in-house designed power supply is extremely well regulated, filtered and decoupled to provide a low noise and low impedance supply to the digital and analog circuitry. With individual supplies from four independent secondary windings on the transformer the analog and digital supplies are kept separated to minimize digital noise in the analog circuit.

Pure audio CD

The CD-2 is designed for audio only and using a pure audio drive is both simpler and better. The reason for this is obvious from a musical point of view. All multi-format drives are based on video designs and clocks, and the audio output is then re-sampled (uncontrolled) to audio output clocks. Many choose to optimize the clock on the drive it self – but no matter what you do, ground potentials are difficult to control and the engine control board is noise inducing.

The Lyngdorf philosophy is to get the audio signal as clean as possible and do the optimization based on the Lyngdorf precision clock system. Based on previous work with CD players and full digital amplifiers we know the do’s and don’ts of clock systems. For the CD-2 we have taken the clock from the Millennium MK IV and implemented it into the CD-2, the key being low phase noise in the audio band.

Intersample Clipping Correction

When mastering CDs the level is often very high, and by analysis you will often find several consecutive maximum samples indicating something is clipped away from the original signal. With this kind of input some CDs sound very compressed because the headroom is nonexistent.

In the CD-2 we reduce the gain with 3 dB – then we use the resampling low pass filters to reshape the clipped samples back to the original shape which gives the modulator in the DAC optimum working conditions.

Electrical Design

The Lyngdorf Audio designed switch mode power supply is extremely well regulated and is filtered and decoupled to provide a low noise and low impedance supply to the digital and analog circuitry. With different supplies from four independent secondary windings on the transformer the analog and digital supplies are kept separated to minimize digital noise in the analog circuit.

At the input we have designed a extremely good mains filter. The filter combined with the switch mode power supply design makes the CD-2 virtually immune to mains and grid noise.

Grounding is optimal, and the entire chassis is connected electrically. The back panel is electrically conductive.

Lyngdorf Audio spends much time and effort in designing products that will not radiate noise that can affect lesser designed products. Making a noise and radiation free design has the advantage that it will also make the CD-2 itself immune to noise from the outside and from products that have not had the same attention to details in the design phase.

D/A converter

The D/A converter section (also used in the Millennium MK IV) is used to drive a high quality, single ended and balanced output stage. The D/A converter is built around the fine Wolfson WM8740 chip. This in combination with our balanced design using very fine audiophile op-amps results in outstanding sonic qualities.

Sample Rate Converter

Upsampling has two major effects:

1. When changing the sampling rate to the optimum operating point of the D/A converter, the best sonic performance is achieved.

The state-of-the-art sample rate converters, using special low-noise design techniques, allows us to upsample the digital output of the audio drive to a selectable output rate. The digital output can be delivered in a 24-bit resolution at a sample rate up to 192 kHz.

The analog section – just as with the digital – is upsampled in a parallel process to 96 kHz. The D/A converter section (also used in the Millennium MK IV) is used to drive a high quality, single ended and balanced output stage.

2. Resampling the output of the CD drive to a low-noise clock suppresses the level of jitter artifacts in the output signal to an absolute minimum.