Hello Everyone,
This is a review and detailed measurements of the Consonance CD 120 Balanced CD Player and Transport.
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Consonance CD 120 - Presentation
Allow me to drop the "balanced" in its name, as it seems there never was an unbalanced version only.
This is one was loaned to me by a friend who wanted to know its real performances. He also told me that this CD Player was considered as a "refence" by a French magazine who used it for a couple of years as the basis for their other reviews. I can't verify that info.
The Consonance is from China and I see it was sold at around 1000€ in 2004. It is no longer available. This CD Player uses a Philips drive (VAM1202) and a Cirrus Logic DAC (CS4396) that is capable of a 100dB SINAD when fed with 24bits data. The CD 120 looks luxurious and the impressive weight of 10kg (22lbs) confirms that feeling,
The back of this player offers a little more than the essential since we get balanced and unbalanced outputs:
View attachment 525919
Only one SPDIF output though.
Let's have a quick look inside:
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Power supply and servo control on the right, conversion and digital output on the left. This one is far from empty!
User experience
The drive is pleasantly fast and reactive, I like it. The remote control is missing with that one and the front button can't be used to FFW/REW which slowed me down in my measurements (too bad for me).
I'm always missing a headphones out, especially with relatively high price devices.
It is gapless playback, proper CD player that is, together with de-emphasis that is applied. Before measuring this CD Player, I enjoyed listening to it with my friend and I did not spot any issues, as nearly always.
Consonance CD 120 - Measurements (Analog outputs)
All measurements performed with an E1DA Cosmos ADCiso (grade 0), and the Cosmos Scaler (100kohms from unbalanced input) for analog outputs, and a Motu UltraLite Mk5 for digital.
I am now consistent with my specific measurements for CD Players, as I described them in the post “
More than we hear”, and as I reported them for the
SMSL PL-200 review. I used the commercial version of my
Audio Technical CD for all measurements. Over time, this will help comparing the devices I reviewed.
The Consonance CD 120 outputs a higher than usual 2.350Vrms from left channel (unbalanced), and 2.355Vrms from right channel (0.01dB more). This is a good 1.1dBu more than from the standard 2Vrms, which is enough to make this one "sound better" than most of the competitors, because it plays louder... Channel imbalance is very good.
I god the exact same results from balanced outputs (same output voltage).
Phase is dead flat, and both outputs respect absolute polarity.
I measured the near same performances from RCA and XLR outputs (XLR are a bit better),
BUT one channel (right) suffered high harmonic distortion when close to or at full scale. Not to the point of me hearing anything wrong, but quite significant in my measurements. I guess this is because of some aging components (?), so I'll review this CD Player based on the left channel only, although I'll show you the issue for the sake of completeness.
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As usual, let's start with my standard 999.91Hz sine @0dBFS (without dither) from the
Test CD (XLR out):
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We are very close to the max resolution of the CD Player and the Cirrus DAC stays below -100dB THD indeed. The below is the RCA output, by the way:
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It is the same to the exception of side bands very close to the fundamental (no consequences). Note the best in class SNR measured by the software, in presence of that full scale test tone. This means the DAC is high resolution (in case we doubted it).
A now, like I promised, this is the right channel (RCA):
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You see high odd harmonics of the fundamental (3kHz, 5kHz, ...). The sum reaches -73dB but as I mentioned before, it was not enough for me to spot an issue when I listened to this player, if someone wants to talk audibility... As a matter of facts, this issue happens only at, or close to full scale. Let me show you that.
At -16dBFS, the two channels are nearly identical (999.91Hz @-16dBFS, no dither):
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In this case the 3rd harmonic is almost the same between left and right channels (-93dBr vs -100dBr). I guess this explains why we did not hear anything.
Now, back to my regular measurements, 999.91Hz @-6dBFS, no dither, left channel:
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This is a very good result, for the CDA.
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Let's have a look a potential Power Supply leakages, the below is a 20Hz to 1kHz zoom with a punishing 512k FFT length to reveal issues:
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I overlaid the left channel from XLR and RCA outputs. As I already mentioned, the only difference between the two is the side bands around the fundamental at -115dBr here. This is not an issue at all, by the way.
This is a very silent CD player, not PS related spikes can be seen.
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Next is the bandwidth:
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This is within -0.1dB, very good I'll say. You can appreciate the near perfect channel match.
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Let's have a look at the behavior of the oversampling filter beyond 20kHz:
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The filter is relatively sharp and fully active at 24kHz with a max attenuation of -100dB (good). The noise created by the delta-sigma modulator shows itself not before 50kHz or so, that is good too. Aliases of the dual AES tones are well attenuated (-100dB). This is better than the
NAD C540 I just reviewed.
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Let's have a look at the multitone test that a lot of you like very much:
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Nailed.
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Oh yes, the jitter test:
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Nailed too, I'd like to always see the same.
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Started with the
Teac VRDS-20 review, and on your request + support to get it done (more
here), I'm adding now an "intersample-overs" test which intends to identify the behavior of the digital filtering and DAC when it come to process near clipping signals. Because of the oversampling, there might be interpolated data that go above 0dBFS and would saturate (clip) the DAC and therefore the output. And this effect shows through distorsion (THD+N measurement up to 96kHz):
The Consonance has only 1dB headroom for intersample overs as so many other CD Players. I’d prefer more since so
many CD Masters are recorded too hot.
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Let's continue with the good old 3DC measurement that Stereophile was often using as a proof of low noise DAC. It is from an
undithered 997Hz sine at -90.31dBFS. With 16bits, the signal should appear (on a scope) as the 3DC levels of the smallest symmetrical sign magnitude digital signal:
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This is a very good trace not only showing perfect linearity but also minimum low level noise.
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Other measurements (not shown):
- IMD AES-17 MD (41Hz & 7993Hz 4:1): -111.3dB
- IMD SMPTE (60Hz & 17kHz 1:4) : -94dB
- IMD TDFD Bass (41Hz & 89Hz 1:1) : -101.8dB
- Dynamic Range : 98.7dB (without dither @-60dBFS)
- Crosstalk: 100Hz (below -140dBr), 1kHz (-138dBr), 10kHz (-132dBr)
- Pitch Error (GPSDO corrected) : 19'999.90Hz (19'997Hz requested) ie -5ppm
- Gapless playback : Yes
Sorry I have only a limited set of IMD measurements as I kept them for the right channel and forgot to record the left one... They are good.
The Dynamic range and crosstalk are best in class.
Pitch error is a very low -5ppm.
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Last and not least, I like to run a THD vs Frequency sweep at -12dBFS as it shows how the conversion has evolved over time. I am currently using the beta version of REW and I discovered that this sweep gives better and more reliable results than before. I overlayed the results with the excellent
Azur 640C V2:
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Same, meaning best in class performance here too for the Consonance.
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As I did with the
Sony CDP-597, I add a "
max DAC resolution" measurement test. It is performed from a 999.91Hz sine @-12dBFS with shape dither (from Audacity). I restrict the THD+N span to 20Hz - 6kHz in REW not to account for the noise of the shape dither beyond 6kHz. I take the calculated ENOB and simply add 2bits to it (due to the -12dB attenuation, as 1bits=6dB). The potential maximum, when calculated from the digital WAV file, is 18.7bits under this test. A "transparent" DAC should achieve 18.7bits, ie 100% in this test.
Here are the results compared to others:
Hey, not bad at all for a 20 years old CD Player! Anything better than 18bits in this test must be considered high-res DAC.
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On demand from the community, I now add a "de-emphasis test" to verify that this flag is detected and the compliance with the expected de-emphasis curve.
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At 11kHz, we should see 8dB difference, so we have a small deviation of 0.5dB here.
Consonance CD 120 - Testing the drive
What would be good measurements if the drive would not properly read a slightly scratched CD, or one that was created at the limits of the norm? The below tests reply to these questions.
Here are the results:
| Test type | Technical test | Results |
| Variation of linear cutting velocity | From 1.20m/s to 1.40m/s | Pass |
| Variation of track pitch | From 1.5µm to 1.7µm | Pass |
| Combined variations of track pitch and velocity | From 1.20m/s & 1.5µm to 1.40m/s & 1.7µm | Pass |
| HF detection (asymmetry pitch/flat ratio) | Variation from 2% to 18% | Pass |
| Dropouts resistance | From 0.05mm (0.038ms) to 4mm (3.080ms) | 0.75mm |
| Combined dropouts and smallest pitch | From 1.5µm & 1mm to 1.5µm & 2.4mm | Fail |
| Successive dropouts | From 2x0.1mm to 2x3mm | 0.5mm |
These are not so good compared to so many others, but the drive of this one was replaced, maybe some further adjustments would be required.
Consonance CD 120 - Digital output
Ok, so we get a decent CD player here. And to expect better from a modern DAC, we need a perfect digital output. Let's check that.
This is my standard 999.91Hz @0dBFS (no dither):
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Perfect.
Next is the 3DC test:
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Nailed, as expected.
My ultimate proof of "perfect" digital output is when I reuse the intersample overs test at 5512.50Hz, with a phase shift of 67.5°, like I did for the
TASCAM CD-200 review. This signal generates an overshoot of +0.69dB. And so, if the signal would be modified before being sent (by an ASRC for instance), it would show either a reduction of amplitude or we'd see some sort of saturation/increase of noise/distorsion. So here we go with the Consonance via the Coax out:
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No distortion and the dashboard shows +0.69dBFS as expected. No ASRC on the digital path here. SNR is only 95.6dB because there is rectangle dither in this test file (consuming half a bit of resolution).
So we get a "perfect" transport in case you're not happy with the internal DAC.
Conclusion
Besides the limited resistance to scratched CDs, the performances of this CD player are quite decent.
I assume the issue with the right channel is unique to this one, and I must say it only impacted the highest level test tones.
And by the way, I thought it'd be interesting to share with you that this issue remained completely hidden to the ears of my friend, his wife
and me.
I hope you enjoyed this review!
Flo
