Arcam CD92 dCS Ring DAC

[DSJR]

I can only speak for myself, but I know my audition was not level-matched.

The audition comparison was between three CD players: Arcam Alpha 9, Rega Planet, and something from NAD. The Arcam clearly stood out from the others on material I knew very well.

Rest of the system I don't recall as clearly. I can see the speakers in my memory but couldn't tell you what they were. Something "with a similar presentation to my Spendors" whatever that may have meant. My own system at the time was Dynaco PAS3 > British Fidelity > Spendor SP2/2. Venue was Stereo Exchange in NYC.

I don't miss buying audio equipment in the pre-Internet world.

Whenever I demonstrated the Rega Planet (Clamshell era) with these Arcams, I made a point of slightly reducing the volume to better match levels (yes, I know I didn't use a meter or oscilloscope). The Alpha 8 and 8Se still came out well, however, but the slight output increase as standard didn't go unnoticed by reviewers at the time. The Planet was almost always sold by us with the Klotz-based 'Couple' interconnect and a 'remote' which worked the Mira amp too.

 

[AnalogSteph]

Noise is rather high and dominated by power supply hum - could be caused by aging caps.

Actually, the problem is staring you right in the face when looking at the inside pictures - this player appears to be a "true blue" IEC Class I device, despite seemingly using a linear power supply. I'll have to stare at the service docs for a bit to get an idea of how easy a mod to "grounded IEC Class II" would be.

Hmm, that's odd... according to the service manual, this might be one of those "IEC Class I but keep everything insulated from the case" designs. So where did they mess up?
Hmm, is this little ceramic disc at the top right really C69? Not exactly Y class, that one. I don't think the PE lead from chassis should have gone to the IEC jack directly originally. Looks like "as-built" does not conform 100% to the service manual. It would have been fine as designed, well, with C69 being a 10n Y2. That would have been a "grounded IEC Class II".
-vs-

EDIT 2: On second thought, something does not add up here. Was the unit connected to an ungrounded outlet by any chance? That would generate a fair bit of leakage current.