Orpheus Zero Review (CD Player)

[ex audiophile]

Their components are not cheap either. From The Ear "The euro price for the Heritage preamp alone is €38,590, and the Heritage power amp sets you back €42,200". Makes Benchmark look even better

 

[restorer-john]

Great review of a very interesting CD player!

 

[Owl]

Thanks for the detailed work, I love the CD player reviews. Very interesting to learn about the various noise shaping strategies.

 

[totti1965]

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!!

What a cool idea! And yes, the photos that @NTTY did, are kind of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen from the inside of electronic stuff.

 

[Ron Texas]

Some interesting insights into audio reproduction here. If you like old stuff have a beer with me.

 

[sam_adams]

It should rather look like this:

Actually, it should look like the below:

Mac analog out-to-in using 24/48 jtest signal from Audacity as the source:

Mac optical out-to-in using 24/48 jtest signal from Audacity as the source:

Mac analog out-to-in using 24/48 jtest signal from REW internal generator as the source:

Mac optical out-to-in using 24/48 jtest signal from REW internal generator as the source:

@amirm's jtest on the Schitt Bifrost from the AP analyzer (AP equi-ripple window):

Using a rectangular window is essentially using no window at all.

 

[amper42]

If I am reading these graphs correctly the $500 Denon DCD-900NE when used as CD transport offers the same measurements as the $10K Orpheus CD Player? It looks like you can spend a bit of coin for the DAC inside the CD player?

 

[AnalogSteph]

If I am reading these graphs correctly the $500 Denon DCD-900NE when used as CD transport offers the same measurements as the $10K Orpheus CD Player?

As would a lot of others, for that matter.

We haven't seen how they handle hard-to-read discs though.

The WM8740 came to CD players for mere mortals by 2006, with Onkyo's DX-7555 (ca. 600€ and 8 kg, if unbalanced outputs only - this appears to have been Onkyo's last flagship model). The next year they also replaced their DX-7333 containing the old bread-and-butter TC9268P DAC with the DX-7355 sporting a WM8716 - now that was quite the upgrade.

 

[restorer-john]

We haven't seen how they handle hard-to-read discs though.

Exactly. And that's where these discs come into the picture.

CLV tests, eccentricity, pitch, dropouts, error correction, burst errors etc.

 

[Hayabusa]

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

PLL?
I though a CD player has its own master x-tal clock at n*44.1KHz?

 

[restorer-john]

PLL?
I though a CD player has its own master x-tal clock at n*44.1KHz?

That was the SPDIF output. An external D/A connected to the coax/optical would have its own PLL to lock to the incoming bitstream.

 

[Rja4000]

Actually, it should look like the below:

Mac optical out-to-in using 24/48 jtest signal from Audacity as the source:

View attachment 396671

Not really.

If you don't believe me, here is what Archimago expects:

And here is what Stereophile expects :

Theory says the same, since the test signal is a combination of a high-level (-3dBFS) sine at exactly 1/4 the sampling frequency and an 1/192 sf squarewave at the level of the least significant bit (LSB).
At the CD sampling rate of 44.1kHz, this shows as a fundamental at 229.6875Hz and a set of decreasing level odd harmonics.

Note that you can't really compare this with an analog measurement, where the peaks are burried in noise.
(And signal should not be dithered.)

Using a rectangular window is essentially using no window at all.

The window function doesn't really make a difference in a digital loopback with a well spaced set of peaks like here.
Peaks are just looking thinner.

 

[Haskil]

Bravo ! And Thank you for this test !

 

[MC_RME]

Nice one, thanks for that!

A few comments:

I missed comments on the speed of reading in CDs after inserting them.
Does this unit have quick search aka scrolling quicker through the song with monitoring?

Orpheus Zero - Measurements (Analog outputs - From CD)

Jitter test (16bits/44.1kHz) shows a beautiful trace:

View attachment 396536

Red trace is what is on the test CD (digital output), it can’t be better. The Orpheus (blue trace) does not add jitter.

As others already pointed out ( @Rja4000 is right) this is not a good but quite bad result. The peaks should descend from left to right. The higher peaks around 1 kHz mean lots of lower frequency jitter. But maybe (as also mentioned) the source was already wrong.

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:

View attachment 396549

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

I do know this kind of measurement from Stereophile, but it was always taken from the analog output, as further demonstration of the capability to resolve low level audio. For testing bit transparency and full 16 bit resolution it might also make sense to copy a file with known CRC-32 checksum to your test disc, then read its CRC on playback. Or use our simple bit test files.

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).

Yes, its DAC outperforms my beloved Technics SL-PG500A, but on the other hand seems to lack many of the Technics features that make using CDs with it so much fun. Not to mention that Technics unit is on the used market for 50 bucks, so I was able to easily repair mine by exchanging the transport PCB when it stopped working.

 

[NTTY]

This looks strange.
It should rather look like this:

View attachment 396625

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

View attachment 396619

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

View attachment 396620

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

View attachment 396621

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.

You’re correct, that’s the Jtest from REW and it’s flawed. That’s the reason why I always overlay the digital and analog results to show the differences, as the digital is not quite what it should be.
If someone knows how to create a 16bits/44.1kHz Jtest WAV file correctly, I’d be happy to update my test CD.
Cheers

 

[Rja4000]

If someone knows how to create a 16bits/44.1kHz Jtest WAV file correctly, I’d be happy to update my test CD.
Cheers

You may easily create this kind of signal with Sox.

I'll post how here later today.

First read:
Following post from user @miero on ASR explains how to play a J-Test signal with sox

 

[NTTY]

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!!

I’d love that and that’d be fun. Sure let me know if/how we can make it happen!

 

[NTTY]

Nice one, thanks for that!

A few comments:

I missed comments on the speed of reading in CDs after inserting them.
Does this unit have quick search aka scrolling quicker through the song with monitoring?

6sec to read after inserting the Stan Getz you see in the review, and 9sec after inserting my test CD.
Yes fast forward with monitoring. It is also extremely fast to skip tracks back and forth. I forgot to mention that.

As others already pointed out ( @Rja4000 is right) this is not a good but quite bad result. The peaks should descend from left to right. The higher peaks around 1 kHz mean lots of lower frequency jitter. But maybe (as also mentioned) the source was already wrong.

Yep, once I have a correct WAV file, I’ll update this review and the others too.

I do know this kind of measurement from Stereophile, but it was always taken from the analog output, as further demonstration of the capability to resolve low level audio. For testing bit transparency and full 16 bit resolution it might also make sense to copy a file with known CRC-32 checksum to your test disc, then read its CRC on playback. Or use our simple bit test files.

True. Since it forces massive changes around bi-polar 0 in 2’s complement, I thought it could highlights some instabilities. If there’s a better way, I’m happy to use. How can I do what you suggest?

Yes, its DAC outperforms my beloved Technics SL-PG500A, but on the other hand seems to lack many of the Technics features that make using CDs with it so much fun. Not to mention that Technics unit is on the used market for 50 bucks, so I was able to easily repair mine by exchanging the transport PCB when it stopped working.

I did not mention it either but I like a lot the 5 buttons pad. The simple interface is really easy to understand. But I don’t need much more than the play button

 

[MC_RME]

You can use any audio file and get its CRC-32 checksum, for example here:

CRC-32 File Checksum

This CRC-32 online tool helps you calculate the hash of a file from local or URL using CRC-32 without uploading the file.

emn178.github.io

There had been small apps/tool to do that offline as well.

Burn it to CD, play it, record it from the digital output, check CRC-32 again.

The note on our Bit Test files most probably does not make sense for you, as it requires an ADI-2 series unit (I spontaneously thought about this option as @Rja4000 has done it this way with CD, AFAIR).

 

[DSJR]

Away from the tech side (thanks for testing and for the follow-up comments and contributions by other experienced posters), I took one look at this player and had a 'downer' on it. Top loading with disc 'weight' (it's not a vinyl LP FFS and even the latter don't need clamps and weights if the mat is chosen properly), Swiss made which automatically doubles or triples the price, the internals look custom (are the Philips servos and so on *really* that bad?). Got to say I never liked top loading players like this and have to add though, that it makes similarly expensive Naim CD players of old look positively tractor-like, with their rinky-dink plastic 'pucks,' cheap Philips based mechs and once ringy cases

And then I saw the thing measures basically very well. That threw me I have to say

Thanks for the review. Can you please keep that £400 or so Denon machine to hand for future testing should your techniques evolve?