Cambridge Audio 651C CD Player

If you’re after a way of extracting every last piece of data from your CDs and turning it into the most musical experience imaginable, then look no further than the all-new 651C CD Player. Developed to offer a true taste of high-end musical reproduction at an altogether more affordable price, it features an all-new twin Digital to Analogue Conversion system (DAC) with the same selectable filter arrangement used in the legendary DacMagic. These enhancements, in addition to completely retuned audio circuits, make for an even purer, more lifelike experience than its highly regarded predecessor.

Where many CD players use drives designed for computers, at Cambridge Audio we went the extra mile and created a CD-only S3 Custom CD ServoTM drive. This audiophile design gives the 651C the ability to retrieve maximum digital information which in turn means you hear every last detail from your discs.

The all important Digital to Analog Convertor
Twin Wolfson WM8742 DACs deliver a significant performance upgrade over the 651C’s award-winning predecessor and are implemented in a dual differential configuration (each channel has its own DAC to process information). A sophisticated Two-Pole Dual Differential Double Virtual Earth Balanced Bessel filter configuration rejects virtually all noise and distortion present in the DACs and filters them to produce an unprecedented level of performance.

The new DACs also feature a selectable digital filter with three settings to suit your own listening preferences and of course your own system:
• The Steep roll-off filter exhibits strong attenuation of aliasing images outside the pass band (i.e. above 22.05kHz) at the expense of a little pre and post-ringing in the time domain. • The Linear phase filter uniquely features ‘constant group delay’ which delays all audio signals at all frequencies by the same amount meaning all audio is fully time-coherent at the output. • Minimum phase meanwhile does not feature constant group delay but rather the co-efficients have been optimised without feed-forward so that the impulse response exhibits no pre-ringing in the time domain.

Custom designed chipset
Cambridge Audio’s CD-only S3 Custom CD ServoTM employs a custom designed chipset and the latest double-sided surface-mount technology for ultra short signal paths with freedom from wire links. Circuits and software have been meticulously designed and S3 dynamically adjusts focusing, tracking and output level of the laser in real-time, allowing for maximum retrieval of the digital information and jitter minimisation. This is all made possible by the implementation of a powerful ARM7 processor and complemented by a highly accurate master clock oscillator and carefully designed impedance-matched clock buffering scheme.

A new level of build quality
Meanwhile, the well-proven transport guarantees incredible rigidity and the CD drawer itself has been designed to offer a smooth, high-end feel. And to ensure simple operation, a high contrast reverse black DFSTN (Double Film Super Twisted Nematic) display offers excellent feedback of the 651C’s impressive features which now include CD-text support.

As with all our Azur CD players, a high quality toroidal transformer ensures lower noise and less waveform distortion for quieter PSU operation.

This complicated sounding ecosystem is, in fact, the result of over ten years’ research and development. A long process but we think that when you hear the 651C, it’ll raise the hairs on your neck and put a smile on your face. Just like it does every time we listen to it…