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Orpheus Zero Review (CD Player)

NTTY

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Hello Everyone,

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Orpheus Zero (Mk1).

Orpheus-001.jpg


As I already wrote in several of my previous reviews, I like testing CD Players, especially older ones. This one is "only" 20 years old, though :)

Stereophile briefly talked about this player but did not measure it. Let me fix that.

My firs review of the Onkyo C-733 here contains information about my measurements which I align with the AES standard (to few exceptions). It means that, over time, you can compare the devices I reviewed.


Orpheus Zero - Presentation

Released in 2005, this is a Swiss made CD player, high quality that means. The price was very high at the time, and it was reading CD Audio only.
This is the firs version, there was an MKII version with a blue display.

Orpheus-000.jpg


It features a professional look, with its rackable 1RU size, except it does not have the necessary holes :cool:
It is a top loader using a Philips CD Pro drive. Conversion is done by a Wolfson DAC WM8740. All of that is relatively simple and housed in a heavy enclosure.

Back panel shows XLR and RCA analog outputs, with Coax and XLR digital outputs:

Orpheus-002.jpg


Despite the slim look, it weight more than 22lbs (10kg), it's always a surprise when I need to carry it.

When opening (manually) the top door, two red led give it a nice touch at night, I like a lot:

Orpheus-006.jpg


There are not so many pictures of this player on the web, so let's quickly check the inside:

Orpheus-011.jpg


This is well organized, no surprise. At the bottom of this picture, you can see the large servo control card with digital output, and just above it, on the right, the small D/A card with the WM8740.

I acquired this player in 2007 and it's been my main player for all these years. I compared it to many other players. I tried to use external DACs in the foolish hope I could improve the sound, but no. I continue to use it as a CD player today, not as a transport. So that player and I have shared a lot of music, and so many personal events... It has a special place in my heart.

For the last 2 years, I trained myself to measure CD players, and I was really afraid of the day that the Orpheus would go under (my) review. What if it did not perform? All these years of thinking I could not find better, was I wrong?

Time has come to verify. Follow me ;)

Orpheus-009.jpg



Orpheus Zero - Measurements (Analog outputs - From CD)

From now on, I will be consistent with my measurements as I described them on the Onkyo C-733 review. So over time, this will help comparing the items I reviewed.

From both RCA and XLR, the Orpheus Zero outputs 2Vrms as per its specs (0.01dB less on the XLR though). The balanced outputs of The Orpheus Zero invert absolute polarity. That said, the interface allows to invert the polarity, and it shows as is (below) not to forget about it:

Orpheus-016.jpg


Let's start with the standard 1kHz sine @0dBFS (dithered) from my test CD (XLR out):

OrpheusZero_1kHz_0dBFS_LR.jpg


Left and right channels are shown but only one gets evaluated in that view. Both channels have nearly the same performances. Plot is on H2 (-110.8dBr and -110.9dBr).

THD+N is limited (and so is the SINAD) by the dither noise present on my test CD. It's the best we can get. It shows 92.9dBr on the dashboard, which is 1dB better than the best CD Players I previously measured, and despite fact I'm measuring here with 1dB headroom on my interface.

The RCA outputs do better on THD perspective (3dB less) but show a little power supply related noise of no concern (below -110dBr). I'll continue this review from XLR only.

Note as well the very precise 1000.00Hz I get from a 1kHz test tone. Not Clock deviation even after 20 years of nearly everyday utilization. It's the Swiss Precision spirit :cool:

For few reviews, I've been adding a view of 1kHz @-6dBFS, so here we go:

OrpheusZero_1kHz_-6dBFS_LR.jpg


The distorsion went down a little (-107.4dB), which is very good and better than the specs.

Other results (not shown) are:
  • Crosstalk : -137dB at 1kHz and -116dB @10kHz
  • IMD AES : -84.4dB (18kHz+20kHz 1:1 @-5dBFS)
I suppose you saw a very silent power supply above, and since I usually add this view, let's have a look:

OrpheusZero_1kHz_PS_LR.jpg


Bandwidth measurements(@-12dBFS below) showed a gentle roll of at 20kHz (-0.2dB) starting early (10kHz),:

OrpheusZero_1kHz_Bandwidth_LR.jpg


The two channels are shown and are perfectly matched (hence only one trace seen), I like to see that (it's not always the case as you can tell from my other reviews).

Let's have a look at the oversampling filter (Overlay of White Noise and 18k+20Hz dual tones):

OrpheusZero_Filter.jpg


This view shows that It is a relatively slow filter with a decent attenuation (roughly -90dB) from the periodic white noise (blue trace). The aliases of 18k and 20kHz test tones are attenuated below -90dB which is very good.

Multitone test showed no issues (1/10 decade):

OrpheusZero_MT_LR_10th.jpg


We have much more than the Audio CD free of distortion.

Updated Jitter test (16bits/44.1kHz) with a better test file, as per your comments (see below and thanks to @Rja4000 for having initiated the discussion):

OrpheusZero_JTest_Corrected.jpg


Red trace is what is on the test CD (from the digital output), it can’t be better and is what's recorded from the test file. The Orpheus (blue trace) adds a (very?) little amount of Jitter.

Started with the Teac VRDS-20 review, and on your request + support to get it done (more here), I'm adding the "intersample-overs" test which intends to identify the behavior of the digital filtering and DAC when it comes 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):

Intersample-overs tests
Bandwidth of the THD+N measurements is 20Hz - 96kHz
5512.5 Hz sine,
Peak = +0.69dBFS
7350 Hz sine,
Peak = +1.25dBFS
11025 Hz sine,
Peak = +3.0dBFS
Yamaha CD-1 (Non-Oversampling CD Player)-79.6dB-35.3dB-78.1dB
Orpheus Zero-80.1dB-29.7dB-57.3dB
Onkyo C-733-79.8dB-29.4dB-21.2dB
Denon DCD-900NE-34.2dB-30.4dB-19.1dB

I kept some references and will keep the same for other reviews, so you can quickly compare. The results of the Orpheus Zero mean the oversampling filter has a good level of headroom, meaning that the resolution of the Wolfson DAC was put in good use.

And let me finish with my favourite measurement, the THD (excluding noise) vs Frequency at -12dBFS:

OrpheusZero_THDvsFreq_-12dBFS.jpg


The Orpheus Zero has no issue here, it is the best trace that I have in my collection of this specific measurement. This an easy test for advanced 1bit DACs. I like this measurement because it shows lack of linearity already at this level with older R2R architectures, and some lower resolution 1bit architectures too, that I enjoy testing.


Orpheus Zero - Measurements (Digital out)

A number of you are into using CD players as transports, and like to know how the digital output performs.

Well, it is perfect. I’ll keep it simple, with what I believe to be the most representative measurement of the digital output quality, and that is a 1kHz sine at -90.31dBFS which shows the 3DC levels of the smallest digital signal in 16bits sign magnitude representation:

Orpheus-ZERO_1kHz_@-90.31dBFS_L_Opti.jpg


I have to note that the signal is extremely stable and would facilitate the job of the DAC's PLL reading it.

The second view below shows what's on the test CD (from the standard 1kHz @0dBFS measurement):

OrpheusZero_1kHz_0dBFS_Opti.jpg


It can't get better than that with my test CD.


Conclusion

Well, I was so anxious to test it, I should have done that way before! Fact is that this player equals the best nearly everywhere, and does better in some cases (ie intersample-overs resistance).

After all, if I never found better, it's simple because this player does not disrupt the CD Audio content. That was kind of a statement from Orpheus Laboratories (now OrpheusLab). It had a price, yes indeed, but definitely not snake oil.

I hope you enjoyed the review as much as I enjoyed writing it. Let me know how to improve and if you have questions. I have recorded all the 46 measurements. If you want me to publish others or run one of your choice, feel free to ask. I will add some new measurements later for the fun of it about some noise shaping test files that @AnalogSteph sent me, and this is quite interesting.

Enjoy your weekend!

--------
Flo
 
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Thank you very much for your effort! This test shows, that perfection was available at least two decades ago. We could have stopped at this point, but the show must go on. It reminds me of the ongoing "evolution" of shavers: they are beating a dead horse for decades now, but still the crowd jumps on the new 5-blade xy-shaver for a smoother shaving experience....
 
The Wolfson DACs were part of the reason people felt there was a sound associated with the DAC.

I wonder if something like the THD vs frequency at different dBFS is why…
 
Bonus...

From recent exchanges with @AnalogSteph (thanks ever so much), I've been tempted to deep dive into Noise Shaping with CD Audio. @AnalogSteph sent me several files of 997Hz sine tones with noise shaping, and the stability of the digital output of the Orpheus allowed me to play with those.

Noise Shaping theoretically allows to go way beyond 16 bits of resolution. So let's check.

First, this is a 997Hz (prime number) sine test tone @0dBFS with standard dither (Triangular Probability Density Function - TPDF) from my test CD, and taken from the digital output of the Orpheus:

1728061331588.png


I use this standard dither as per AES, in my test tones and reviews here. Dither is low level noise that reduces distorsion and improves linearity. It reduces the quantization errors is digital domain. Note that the software computes a resolution of 15.8 bits. Keep that in mind.

Now, let's go further and "shape" this added noise for our ears. We do not ear everything equal (we are bad in low and high frequencies). So, Noise Shaping is a technique that pushes this dithered noise to where it's of less importance. This is how it looks like:

1728061652125.png


Note that this time, the software computes 14.1 bits of resolution, because of the increased noise above 10kHz.

That said, you see the noise floor from 20Hz to 6khz is very much lower, which is the intent of the noise shaping. Our ears are much better in the area of 1khz to 6khz, and this is where we need (very) good SINAD.

So let's restrict the computation from 20Hz to 6kHz:

1728062196450.png


Now, where it truly counts, we see that the software computes 19.2 bits of true resolution. Note that THD is at -143dB... (well, on 6 harmonics only in the computation).

And this is from an audio CD...

It means what it means: Audio CD and noise shaping allow an equivalent resolution of more than 19bits. Eat this SACD :cool:

--------
Flo
 
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Great review @NTTY . Particularly love the detailed photos. Thanks for sharing your work and passion. :cool:
 
So much disappointment, I took a look at their website and they are selling this.


The Stellar Ultimate Power Cable has been created to integrate the latest technologies in audio. It uses special plugs and special copper wires for currents surges. This cable has been design to match with ORPHEUS devices with the best performance.


The power cable has been designed fast response for the high currents request and that is why the impedance of the cable is very low. The cable is connected to high audio grade cryogenized connectors. Due to several copper shielding, this cable has a high immunity to radiofrequency and electromagnetic interferences. The copper OFC (Oxygen Free Copper) is guaranteed pure at 99.99%. All these outstanding specifications of the Stellar Ultimate Power Cable will make your audio system sound even better.
 
Bonus...

From recent exchanges with @AnalogSteph (thanks ever so much), I've been tempted to deep dive into Noise Shaping with CD Audio. @AnalogSteph sent me several files of 997Hz sine tones with noise shaping, and the stability of the digital output of the Orpheus allowed me to play with those.

Noise Shaping theoretically allows to go way beyond 16 bits of resolution. So let's check.

First, this is a 997Hz (prime number) sine test tone @0dBFS with standard dither (Triangular Probability Density Function - TPDF) from my test CD, and taken from the digital output of the Orpheus:

View attachment 396594

I use this standard dither as per AES, in my test tones and reviews here. Dither is low level noise that reduces distorsion and improves linearity. It reduces the quantization errors is digital domain. Note that the software computes a resolution of 15.8 bits. Keep that in mind.

Now, let's go further and "shape" this added noise for our ears. We do not ear everything equal (we are bad in low and high frequencies). So, Noise Shaping is a technique that pushes this dithered noise to where it's of less importance. This is how it looks like:

View attachment 396595

Note that this time, the software computes 14.1 bits of resolution, because of the increased noise above 10kHz.

That said, you see the noise floor from 20Hz to 6khz is very much lower, which is the intent of the noise shaping. Our ears are much better in the area of 1khz to 6khz, and this is where we need (very) good SINAD.

Sow let's restrict the computation from 20Hz to 6kHz:

View attachment 396596

Now, where it truly counts, we see that the software computes 19.2 bits of true resolution. Note that THD is at -143dB... (well, on 6 harmonics only in the computation).

And this is from a CD Audio...

It means what it means: CD Audio and noise shaping allow an equivalent resolution of more than 19bits. Eat this SACD :cool:

--------
Flo

Very interesting add-on ! Thanks to you for having made this measurements and to AnalogSteph for his insight and test files.

Readers may be interested to know that the great Italian Hi-Fi magazine Audioreview, which have published impressive measurements and studies, used to published the equivalent resolution of digital players, from CD to SA-CD players. For the former, they were mistaken the same way the reading of your software would led the unsuspecting to believe that the resolution of noise shaped dither in the frequency band of interest is lower than that of ordinary dithered CDs: published ENOB of SA-CD players were usually less than 15 bits, whereas the published FFTs in the very same tests clearly showed that SA-CD players reading an SA-CD test disc did have much lower noise floors than when reading a CD across the entire audio band and a bit above. It just happened that the software took into account the out of band noise-shaped noise above the upper audio frequency to compute ENOB. In all fairness, an SA-CD player is able to produce at its analogue output a noise floor roughly quite as low as shown above between 20 Hz to 6 kHz with a noise-shaped dither, but acros the entire audio bandwidth (20 Hz to 20 kHz).
 
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What’s sort of cool about this is that this is all theoretical, but if we could hear the difference between noise shaped and non-noise shaped playback of music, it would explain how the measurements don’t lie, and also how something that has worse 20-20kHz measurements sounds better….

It’s because you have to weight the measurements by acoustic perception…
 
Weighting measurements by human perception has been an integral part of audio electronics and acoustic for a very long time!

For instance, in the '50s and '60s, the BBC (UK) and the DIN Institute (Germany) separately assessed the subjective intrusiveness of noise. The results of both works had converged very well and are now part of the ITU-R (former CCIR) 468 noise measurement standard. This standard (which mandates both a particular perceptual weighting of the noise and special noise measurement circuitry) is not widely discussed on ASR, if discussed at all, but, to my understanding, is considered the most significant method of evaluating the perception of noise in electronic in the broadcast and pro-audio industry.

The weighting of harmonic products by their proximity to the fundamental to take into account the masking effect of the former has been known for a very very long time also!

And so on...
 
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Fine ... but though I still buy CDs I have actually played one in several years.
 
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„Let me know how to improve and if you have questions. I have recorded all the 46 measurements. If you want me to publish others or run one of your choice, feel free to ask. I will add some new measurements later for the fun of it about some noise shaping test files that @AnalogSteph sent me, and this is quite interesting.“



Perhaps it is @amirm who may improve a bit by joining the one or another measurement! (E.g. intersample over test?)
Great review - extremely telling!
 
Weighting measurements by human perception has been an integral part of audio electronics and acoustic for a very long time!

Of course! Stereophile always talks about wideband noise measurements versus A-weighted ones.

However, it seems like most published vendor specifications are not weighted.
 
Weighting measurements by human perception has been an integral part of audio electronics and acoustic for a very long time!

For instance, in the '50s and '60s, the BBC (UK) and the DIN Institute (Germany) separately assessed the subjective intrusiveness of noise. The results of both works had converged very well and are now part of the ITU-R (former CCIR) 468 noise measurement standard. This standard (which mandates both a particular perceptual weighting of the noise and special noise measurement circuitry) is not widely discussed on ASR, if discussed at all, but, to my understanding, is considered the most significant method of evaluating the perception of noise in electronic in the broadcast and pro-audio industry.

The weighting of harmonic products by their proximity to the fundamental to take into account the masking effect of the former has been known for a very very long time also!

And so on...
Okay, but the modern gear that @amirm does normally test (with often 120 dB + SINAD!)……
Amir’s measurements without any A-weighting or so are simply more strictly. And the weighting suggestions of the DIN guys or the AES guys may change from decade to decade. So let’s keep the unweighted measurements because these are the RAW stuff. Weightend - let’s see it as an addition!
 
View attachment 396595

Note that this time, the software computes 14.1 bits of resolution, because of the increased noise above 10kHz.

That said, you see the noise floor from 20Hz to 6khz is very much lower, which is the intent of the noise shaping. Our ears are much better in the area of 1khz to 6khz, and this is where we need (very) good SINAD.

Sow let's restrict the computation from 20Hz to 6kHz:

View attachment 396596

Now, where it truly counts, we see that the software computes 19.2 bits of true resolution. Note that THD is at -143dB... (well, on 6 harmonics only in the computation).

And this is from a CD Audio...

It means what it means: CD Audio and noise shaping allow an equivalent resolution of more than 19bits. Eat this SACD :cool:

--------
Flo
Excellent review.
Thanks !

The noise shaping analysis is very interesting.

Also, for once, the REW plots have easily readable figures !
This is the format all REW users should use for publishing, IMO.
Well done.
 
Jitter test (16bits/44.1kHz) shows a beautiful trace:

OrpheusZero_JTest.jpg


Red trace is what is on the test CD (digital output), it can’t be better. The Orpheus (blue trace) does not add jitter
This looks strange.
It should rather look like this:

1000025293.png


This reminds me that the REW generator 16 bits Jitter test signal was wrong last time I tried.
(24 and 32 bits are correct)

I'll check again.


EDIT: I retrieved my original test files.

REW 16 bits J-test signal gives this, with a digital loopback

1000025290.png


while theory -and signal generated with another software- gives this

1000025291.png


The 24 bits version of the signal with REW gives the expected plot profile

1000025292.png


I don't know if the last version still has that wrong.
I'll check later.

PS: of course, anyway, this was just a very small bug in an otherwise immensely usefull and brilliant tool provided by REW's author @JohnPM . This is not diminushing this great tool's value by any way.

EDIT:
@JohnPM made an update to allow a 16 bits J-test export as from next REW build
 
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Great review! I really like the sort of intimate approach to a device that has served you well for such a long time :)
 
It means what it means: CD Audio and noise shaping allow an equivalent resolution of more than 19bits. Eat this SACD :cool:
Now to be fair, DSD64 is about the equivalent of 18/88. But an effective 18/44 is certainly feasible with a trusty CD. We'd really have plenty of dynamic range available on the ol' silver disc. (And that's not even talking about the cheat of using MP3 CDs.) Instead, everything gets crammed in at the top, to the point where 8 bits would do at times.

The next interesting part would be how the analog output fares with this. This player is using a WM8740 DAC, a relatively high-performance part in its day (DR 117 dB(A), THD+N -104 dB). You may need to resort to the -20 dBFS tone for an accurate picture as that is getting close to the Ultralite's capabilities.

From both RCA and XLR, the Orpheus Zero outputs 2Vrms as per its specs (0.01dB less on the XLR though).
That tells me it's a purely impedance-balanced output, i.e. one leg probably just has a resistor and coupling cap going to ground. If it's good enough for Behringer and countless other manufacturers, it was good enough for Orpheus, apparently.

It's a good thing it has those outputs, too, as the device is firmly IEC Class I. Hence also the absence of any mains leakage to speak of. What's a good thing in (galvanic) isolation could turn into a ground loop in a real setup though.

Intersample-overs tests
Bandwidth of the THD+N measurements is 20Hz - 96kHz
5512.5 Hz sine,
Peak = +0.69dBFS
7350 Hz sine,
Peak = +1.25dBFS
11025 Hz sine,
Peak = +3.0dBFS
Yamaha CD-1 (Non-Oversampling CD Player)-79.6dB-35.3dB-78.1dB
Orpheus Zero-80.1dB-29.7dB-57.3dB
Onkyo C-733-79.8dB-29.4dB-21.2dB
Denon DCD-900NE-34.2dB-30.4dB-19.1dB
That's peculiar, it behaves more like a NOS player. I wonder whether there is any upsampling following digital attenuation + limiting going on in one of the socketed PLCC package ICs. (If you ever need to service this unit, I'd almost be tempted to buy a PLCC chip puller. A bit of contact cleaner may eventually be appreciated.)

Build appears neat and tidy inside with good-quality parts, very Swiss that. It's somewhat reminiscent of some entry-level test gear I've seen. Still it's not exactly impressive what you get in terms of electronics for what must have been north of $5000 at the time... I guess being made in small numbers in Switzerland did it no favors in that regard.
 
Thank you very much as always for your reviews, very interesting.
great devices, and once again with surprising performances for the age.
Thanks as always for the internal photos of the devices, which I really like!!

PS I saw that you live in Switzerland, who knows, one day we can't get together, so I'll bring you the Mark Levinson 31.5 to test.... I'd like to find out if its 28 kilograms of weight justify the fame that goes with it!!
 
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