Classé CD/DVD-1 find!

onanysunday

Listen carefully
Does anyone know anything about Classé audio? I just finished work on revitalizing and upgrading a non-functional Magnavox CBD650 and Rotel RCD-855 and was looking for another fun project. I came across this player and got it cheap because it did not read discs and was being sold as "not working" and for parts only. I thought I'd take a chance on it and might possibly be able to bring it back to life with a little luck, tweaking, and (hopefully) no extra parts.. When I received it in the mail today I plugged it in and lo and behold, it works perfectly! and plays every CD I've thrown at it!! It sounds incredibly realistic. It has dual Burr-Brown PCM1704 DACs, a large custom torroidal power supply, gold plated jacks, and loads of OSCONs and Nichicon power caps with several heatsinks that run burning hot. It is all metal and heavy. The CD tray loading mechanism is beautifully clean, fast and precise.

It puts out the most incredibly clean audio signal I think I've ever heard with more slam, dynamism and detail than I ever thought possible from my old CD collection. All CDs sound very good while others sound incredibly good. Maybe I am hearing the difference in the quality of the mastering from one CD to the next? I have to say I am quite pleased with this. Does anyone else have anything to add to the discussion of Classé in general or this model in particular?

Tweaking and modifying CD players for performance is my hobby. I love soldering and have upgraded several without issue, but I am not too sure I could really improve too much on this design. Thoughts? I was thinking of possibly removing the muting transistors near the output jacks as an experiment.. I can't get a good read on what the opamps are because they are so tiny! But they must be a great match and doing a great job with the current layout to sound this good. I love the internal layout of this machine. It's very clean, open, and easy to remove and work on the PCBs. Well-designed using performance parts with minimal clutter. I could be wrong, but I believe it had an msrp around $3k. Not bad for $80.


Classe!.jpg
Classe6.jpg Classe5.jpg Classe4.jpg Classe3.jpg
 
Yeah, I still can't understand why he'd sell it as non-working for $80 when working units are selling for several hundred. Go figure. I found out the opamps are BB OPA627AU. Quite good, those will be staying in. It's kind of exciting and yet perplexing at the same time that someone has already done all the performance work for me at the factory. I am not used to that.
 
I was listening to CDs until the wee hours of the morning out of sheer excitement and now I have to go to work and I'm too tired, maybe I'll have to call in sick and listen some more..
 
It does have HDCD decoding as well but the only disc I had with this was Stabbing Westward - Darkest Days which was not the best CD to listen because there's a lot of extra "noise" and distortion due to the style of it's loud, angry music. It's not the best recording to begin with. I did find a test CD for sale that is a comparison sampler that plays the same tracks one with the higher resolution and the other without. That could be a fun little listening experiment on this. Some of my regular Redbook CDs sounded way clearer and crisper than the HDCD. There aren't too many titles on this sadly "dead" format, does anyone know if the HDCD capability also processes the regular CDs to sound better when played through this unit?
 
The guy I bought my Atma-sphere M60 amps from bought a very nice cosmetically challenged Classe' power amp to replace the Atma-spheres with. He has tinnitus real bad and couldn't bring himself to keep the Atma-spheres because of it. The Classe' he was able to pick up at a decent price because it had been damaged in shipping. He had to fix a couple of items on it, but it is running a close second to the Atma-spheres for him.

I'd agree that this player will be a keeper for you for some time to come. :thumbsup:
 
Wonderful find. What you describe is similar to my experience when listening for the first time to my CDs on a Astin Trew CDP: differences with other CDPs were not small! I wouldn't mess a lot with this high end CDP, unless there are some tweaks discussed on the internet that have some consensus.
 
Before switching to flea watt tube amps I owned a Classe CAP-150 integrated.

Classe gear is high quality and is sometimes referred to as the "Canadian Krell".
 
It does have HDCD decoding as well but the only disc I had with this was Stabbing Westward - Darkest Days which was not the best CD to listen because there's a lot of extra "noise" and distortion due to the style of it's loud, angry music. It's not the best recording to begin with. I did find a test CD for sale that is a comparison sampler that plays the same tracks one with the higher resolution and the other without. That could be a fun little listening experiment on this. Some of my regular Redbook CDs sounded way clearer and crisper than the HDCD. There aren't too many titles on this sadly "dead" format, does anyone know if the HDCD capability also processes the regular CDs to sound better when played through this unit?

The chip for HDCD only decodes that 20bit format vs. 16 bit regular cds. It shouldn't make a regular cd sound like a HDCD. I'm always on the hunt for HDCDs because they are better.
 
Back
Top Bottom