Ayon Audio CD-10 Hi Fi Review

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Ayon CD-10 Player

By Greg Borrowman | Friday, 09 June 2017 06:31

Ayon CD-10 SACD DAC Front

Ayon Audio has released its CD-10 SACD/CD player, which is a re-design of the company’s CD-1sx. It has a new DAC, a switchable PCM-DSD converter, a magnetic disc clamp and a 6H30 single-ended triode output stage. ‘Ayon’s new CD-10 presents a new level of musical performance with stunning vitality, clarity, natural warmth, and superb dynamic contrasts,’ said Boris Granovsky, of Absolute HiEnd, which distributes Ayon Audio in Australia. ‘When you factor in its attractive appearance and superb construction quality, I think that in this price-range it’s one of the most innovative and best-sounding players ever built.

The CD-10 has a Class-A triode vacuum-tube output stage that’s set up for both single-ended and balanced operation and has a very low output impedance so it can drive long runs of interconnect to an amplifier and still interface correctly with either valve or solid-state amplifiers. One of the features of the CD-10 is the shortness of the signal paths inside it, thanks to completely redesigned PCBs. ‘The shorter the signal paths, the less the possibility of sonic degradation from various sources, including the wire itself,’ Granovsky told Australian Hi-Fi Magazine. ‘Even on the circuit boards, the copper traces are kept to a very minimum length and because the CD-10 is completely assembled by hand, interconnect wires are also very short.’

The Ayon CD-10’s circuitry has no negative feedback of any kind and includes a sequenced soft-start power-up circuit to extend valve life, along with a special ‘warm-up’ function. The low-noise R-core power transformer has separate transformer windings for the analogue and digital circuits, with valve rectification for the analog output stages, ten separate voltage regulators and both a.c. and d.c. line filtering.

Ayon says it designed the CD-10 in modular format, with plug-in PCBs so it can be easily updated in the event of technical modifications in the future. It’s also available in two different configurations, the ‘CD-10 Standard’ and the ‘CD-10 Signature’ with the Signature version featuring Mundorf supreme capacitors.

Manufacturer’s Specifications: Ayon Audio CD-10 SACD Player

Conversion rate:    768kHz/32 bit & DSD256
USB:  24/384kHz & DSD 64×/128×
Dynamic range:    >119dB
Output Voltage: 0 – 5V (Variable)
Output Impedance: 300Ω
S/N Ratio:    >119dB
Frequency Resp.:     20Hz–40kHz ±0.3dB
THD: <0.001%
Dimensions (WDH): 480×360×120mm
Weight: 13kg