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July 1, 2009 Simaudio Moon CD3.3 CD Player Breathing new life into your discs and . . . digital music files? This is the first CD player I’ve reviewed for the SoundStage! Network, and for good reason: I haven’t used a CD player at home in four or five years. It’s not that I have anything against CD players, but after years of ripping digital music to hard drives and playing them back through what is essentially my own radio station, the idea of swapping discs just seemed so passé. Additionally, time and again I’d proven to myself -- and to many others -- that music stored on a hard drive sounds better than music coming out of a CD transport. So who needs a CD player? I’m not really that closed-minded. When the chance came to review the Simaudio Moon CD3.3 ($3000 USD), I was keen to give it a whirl. I know from listening at audio shows and at the homes of other reviewers that Simaudio makes some of the best CD players anywhere, from the inexpensive CD.5 all the way up to the superlative two-box Moon Evolution Andromeda, and I wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to hear one of their new designs in my own home. Besides, the only digital source I’ve heard that outperforms the combination of my rips, the Benchmark DAC1 Pre and the Synergistic Research Tesla Tricon USB cable, is the Moon Evolution SuperNova. I just had to know where the CD3.3, at less than half the cost of the SuperNova, fit into the picture. And the CD3.3 has a bonus feature that raised the intrigue level considerably: a coaxial digital input. With this and an outboard USB-to-S/PDIF converter, I could compare the CD3.3 with my PC setup at the flick of a digital input switch. Game on, Simaudio! Description The CD3.3 shares its modern, minimalist look with Simaudio’s Moon i3.3 integrated amplifier stablemate and the less-expensive .5- and 1-series components. The CD3.3’s aluminum faceplate, machined in Simaudio’s own state-of-the-art milling facility, is available in silver or matte black. The remainder of the 16.9"W x 3.5"H x 13.1"D chassis is a study in elegant understatement, with black, powder-coated, heavy gauge steel making the 18-pound player feel as solid as it looks. The front panel features standard CD control buttons, but also includes an input selector that electronically switches between the transport mechanism and the rear-mounted digital input. The remote control is a run-of-the-mill generic plastic type stenciled with the Simaudio logo; the company’s beautifully executed, machined-from-solid-aluminum remote is an option. The CD3.3’s long list of high-grade design features includes separate analog and digital power supplies, each mounted on its own ground plane for ultra-low noise; ten stages of DC voltage regulation for a smooth, steady power flow; a proprietary transport mechanism mounted on a Sim-designed M-Quattro four-point floating suspension; and digital internal processing to 24-bit/1.411MHz. All of this should equal a CD player that, electronically, is exceptionally quiet. Simaudio claims for the CD3.3 a very wide frequency response of 2Hz-72kHz and, within the range of human hearing, a flat response of 20Hz-20kHz, +0/-2dB. Sound reproduction doesn’t get much more neutral than that. The CD3.3’s digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is based on the Burr-Brown PCM1798 24-bit/192kHz chip. This is controlled by a very precise digital clock whose intrinsic jitter Simaudio claims is less than 25 picoseconds RMS. In layman’s terms, that’s very low jitter! On the DAC’s output Simaudio uses a proprietary analog filter that, like the rest of the CD3.3’s circuitry, is laid out in heavy tracings of gold-plated copper. The review sample had both single-ended and the optional balanced outputs ($200); I used the former for this evaluation. The transport mechanism is warranted for three years, the electronics for ten years. Use The CD3.3 is as easy to operate as most other CD players, but of course this one has an input selector. When the input is set to the internal CD drive, the player’s red LED display shows the usual track information in red digits large enough to be clearly seen from about 15’ away. Switching to the digital input results in a screen displaying "Dl -- - -- -," the dashes representing "wait while I lock on to the external signal." Once that happens (it took only a second or two), the display shows the sample rate of the incoming data. The CD3.3 is compatible with seven different input sampling rates: 32, 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.2, and 192kHz. System In addition to my regular reference amp, the Simaudio Moon i5.3, I used Focus Audio’s FS8 loudspeakers and Supra Cable Ply3.4/S speaker cable. Interconnect duties were performed by a pair of single-ended TARA Labs RSC1 interconnects fitted with the Crystal Cable Bridge. Power cables were a Synergistic Research T2 on the CD3.3 and a T3 on the amp. CD-based audio tracks were ripped using Exact Audio Copy, but high-resolution DVD-based tracks were copied in normal fashion to a hard drive. Playback software was Foobar2000. Connection between the computer and USB conversion devices was via Synergistic Research’s remarkable Tesla Tricon USB cable. Sound I wanted to get a good handle on the sound of the CD3.3’s transport before I started messing with the digital input, so I stacked up some CDs and sat back for an old-fashioned listening session. First up was Green Day’s newly minted 21st Century Breakdown (Reprise 517153). This rock/punk trio doesn’t need studio effects or layered vocals to sound good, and its latest recording provides ample proof of this. The CD3.3 blasted the disc’s first single, "Know Your Enemy," with such speed and drive that someone really should have yelled "Incoming!" The blitzkrieg-like attack of Tres Cool’s deep, thunderous drumming was a marvel to behold and, combined with the wall-of-crunch guitar and bass of remaining members Billy Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt, had both my cats tearing out of the room as if it had suddenly been inhabited by a rabid English mastiff. This was such viscerally exciting stuff that I didn’t budge till the rest of the disc had played out. May my ear drums and cats forgive me. With the speakers now limbered up, I listened to a succession of more feline-friendly jazz recordings. The first of these was Holly Cole’s self-titled 2007 release (Alert 4404). Cole’s voice is strong and very rich over a wide dynamic range, and she has a degree of control over her vocal cords that must make lesser singers green with envy. An example of this is heard in "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries," in which Cole moves from a low, sultry contralto to a playful, bubbling soprano in the space of one quick breath. Mishandled, the effect of this vocal warble sounds like an LP transitioning from running a little too slow to a little too fast. The CD3.3 didn’t sound like a record on an off-speed turntable, though, and resolved the fast but subtle tonal changes with lightning speed, easily revealing the effect the singer wished to achieve. Other recordings continued to illustrate that the CD3.3 was a thoroughbred when it came to the clean, crisp, transparent playback of music. Paul Anka’s improbably entertaining Rock Swings (Verve 000475102), which features a collection of swing jazz/big-band versions of some of the biggest rock songs of the past two decades, offers the sort of fresh, clean sound that livens up any listening session. With such hard-driven songs as Van Halen’s "Jump," Oasis’s "Wonderwall," and even Nirvana’s "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the CD3.3 ordered the 11-member band into individual cells, with never an instrument intruding into the space occupied by another. With quieter songs, such as R.E.M.’s "Everybody Hurts," the dead silence of the CD3.3’s ultra-low-noise power supply came to the fore (if that’s not an oxymoron). I just love when music suddenly appears from a black void. So the CD3.3’s disc transport was an excellent piece of kit -- but, of course, it’s not the only show in town. The best way to assess the CD3.3’s digital input would be, I thought, to hook it up to my laptop. As mentioned, the Simaudio product lacks a USB-to-S/PDIF converter of its own, so I had to provide an external device to do that primary conversion. Happily, the new Bel Canto Link 24/96 arrived here just after the CD3.3 -- I took fate’s hint and placed the Link between the computer and the CD3.3. Though it’s great that Simaudio has put a digital input on the CD3.3, I confess that I don’t understand why they’ve done so. The company has, after all, paid very close attention to the design and isolation of the CD3.3’s disc transport, so it doesn’t seem likely that the input was added with an external transport in mind. But if the input was added to facilitate connection to a computer, then why not go all the way and add a USB interface? It may have boiled down to an issue of cost, but if I were producing a high-performance component such as the CD3.3, I wouldn’t want third-party hardware in the audio chain, potentially messing up the performance. That sounds almost prophetic . . . The fairest means of comparing the disc transport to the hard drive/digital input was, I thought, to listen to the very same tracks again, this time sourced from the computer. I expected the hard-drive-based music to best the performance of the CD3.3’s internal drive by a wide margin, but I was surprised to hear that the results were a lot closer than that. What’s interesting here, though, is not that the disc player did such a good job, but that the differences were absolutely consistent from track to track. In every case, on every song, the CD player sounded rich, even a little mellow, compared to the hard drive’s strict neutrality. This wasn’t a gross coloration, but rather a touch of humanity that was present in the CD transport but was lacking with the Link 24/96 and hard drive. In contrast, when it came to the retrieval of low-level detail and ambience cues, the hard drive took the lead and never gave it up. This I intuitively credit to the greater stability of the hard drive as a storage platform, but I’m no engineer. And because I’m not an engineer, I must confess that I don’t know if the subjective differences I heard had something to do with the ripped tracks, the computer, the Bel Canto Link 24/96, the Tesla Tricon USB cable, or all of the above. Based on the direct-from-hard-drive performance of the Benchmark DAC1 Pre (below), I have to surmise that the slight performance hit came from the Bel Canto Link. This takes me back to my comment about the undesirability of having a third-party component inline with one’s own product. This doesn’t mean for a second that there’s anything wrong with the Bel Canto Link 24/96; it just means that, in this scenario, it might not have been the best USB converter for the job. Comparison Benchmark’s USB DAC products are stellar performers. The DAC1 Pre ($1595), which I’ve been using for some time, isn’t perhaps the most obvious competitor to the CD3.3, lacking as it does a CD mechanism. It also costs about half the Simaudio’s price, though it comes out about the same when you factor in the cost of a computer. In my system, the Benchmark has been a paragon of clean, neutral digital audio reproduction. It’s dead quiet, and its proprietary USB interface can extract up to 24/96 data from a computer. That’s significant, because standard USB interfaces are limited to 16/44.1 "Red Book" CD performance. This was very noticeable when playing Reference Recordings’ amazing HRx-format recordings, which have more dynamic headroom and lower distortion than any other recordings I’ve ever heard. These marvels of the recording art are very clean and very dynamic, and pack more detail than a Where’s Waldo? puzzle. The HRx recordings are distributed on DVD discs as very large WAV files, but can’t be played in a DVD player; they must be copied to a hard drive for playback. You can already guess that this gave the Benchmark DAC1 Pre a distinct advantage over the CD3.3. Through the CD3.3 and Link 24/96 -- which for some reason were limited to 44.1kHz in my system -- the Reference Recordings tracks sounded more like high-quality "Red Book" recordings than full-on hi-rez types. Much of the spaciousness and clarity that are HRx hallmarks were apparent, but less detail and less emotion were conveyed than through the Benchmark. To draw a visual analogy, the combo of CD3.3 and Link 24/96 provided a DVD-quality image, while the Benchmark output full hi-rez 1080p.
Still, the Benchmark DAC1 Pre wasn’t king of the castle in the 16-bit realm. When I played standard-resolution files through the Benchmark and compared those to the same track spinning on CD in the CD3.3, the competition was much tighter. By cueing the tracks to play as closely to simultaneously as I could get them, then rapidly switching between two inputs on my Simaudio i5.3, I was able to compare the CD3.3 and the Benchmark DAC1 Pre head to head. Actually, I switched them so much that I soon lost track of which input corresponded to which source. I now had a quasi-blind test under way, and was able to really focus on trying to tell which was which. After a while I concluded that it didn’t matter which was the Benchmark and which the Simaudio CD3.3, because they both sounded excellent. Sure, the Benchmark had a slight edge in spatial cues and the CD3.3 a more enjoyable midrange, but in the end, I don’t think it mattered. If a computer-based digital source is in your future, Benchmark has just the product for you. But if you’re happy to spin CDs till the cows come home, Simaudio offers truly state-of-the-art performance in the Moon CD3.3. Conclusion When I began this review, I was pretty sure I’d be writing an obituary for the midpriced CD player. Even for $3000, I didn’t think Simaudio -- or anyone else -- could pack enough technology into a CD player to stay competitive with PC-based digital sources. Well, I’m here to tell you that the Simaudio Moon CD3.3 has proved me wrong. Not only is it competitive, in some cases the CD3.3 bested what I’d thought was the best in digital reproduction short of an $8000 megaplayer. In the CD3.3, Simaudio turns out digital performance from the Compact Disc -- a technology well into its golden years -- that is as contemporary as tomorrow. . . . Colin Smith Simaudio Moon CD3.3 CD Player Simaudio Ltd. E-mail: sales@simaudio.com
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