Rega VALVE ISIS CD Player - NEW !

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REGA VALVE ISIS CD Player

Rega’s now legendary head electronics engineer Terry Bateman spent 10 years researching the concept of a CD player using valves in the output amplifier. Valves have been widely used in musical instrument and recording amplification from the 1950s to the present day, therefore it made great sense to develop a valve based CD player to match that of the signal chain found in such applications.

Valve version of our reference Isis CDP

The valve Isis shares the same digital and USB sections as found in the solid-state version, however, the analogue stage is valve based with passive filtering. This stage uses two military specification triple mica 5814A (ECC82/12AU7) triodes being driven by the revolutionary Wolfson WM8741 ultra high performance digital to analogue converter.

KEY FEATURES

Rega’s advanced CD technology

TwinWolfson DACs

Rega ‘K-Power’ smoothing capacitors

Custom designed reference case

CNC reference remote control

Lifetime warranty against manufacture defects

PRODUCT DETAILS

DESIGN

The valve Isis shares the same digital and USB sections as found in the solid state version, however, the analogue stage is valve based with passive filtering. This stage uses two military specification triple mica 5814A (ECC82/12AU7) triodes being driven by the revolutionary Wolfson WM8741 ultra high performance digital to analogue converter. The output buffer and transformer driver stage uses two ECC88 (6DJ8/6922) triodes. This, like its solid-state stablemate, is of an un-orthodox design. The design goal with this player was to keep away from the normal design approach of “let’s runit through a valve to make it sound warm”, but take advantage of industrial valve circuits to make an articulate and competent valve based CD player. Careful choice has been made for every component in the digital and theanalogue signal path to ensure the integrity of the signal.

Careful design of the PCBs ensures isolation of notjust the digital and analogue sections, but also the motor, display and userinterface processor. All sonically critical electrolytic capacitors have beenby-passed with polypropylene or polyester film capacitors.

In addition to this, large value electrolyticcapacitors have also been by-passed with audio grade electrolytic capacitors.Power supply impedances in the digital to analogue converter are kept very lowby the use of solid polymer capacitors. All power supplies utilise custom RegaK-Power smoothing capacitors, and fast diodes have been used throughout inpower supply rectification.

The Isis uses enhanced and optimised control code forthe control of the CD processor and user display; this will speed up theinitialisation process by means of a tighter control interface between the usermicro and CD processor.

TECHNOLOGY

The differential output of the digital to analogueconverter drives a valve differential (operational) amplifier, with a verymodest amount of feedback to stabilise the operating conditions. The 5814Abased differential amplifier, with a solid-state current generator in its tail,takes full advantage of the differential output from the digital to analogueconverter. This is followed by a passive Butterworth second-order LC filter.Finally, this signal is buffered using a low anode resistance ECC88 triode todrive the output and balancing transformer.

In design it was felt that unnecessarily high levelsof THD would unduly overwhelm the qualities of the digital stage of the Isis.The overall THD is typically 0.06% being prominently even order, where the 2ndharmonic predominates. This will give the sonic dynamics of the valves withoutdominating the sonic qualities of the digital section.

After many hours of tube rolling, we found the 5814Adifferential amplifier position was best on the grounds of micro-phonics,reliable operation and sonic qualities. Both the HT & LT power supplies arefully regulated and use the same power supply parts as used in the solid-stateIsis. Like the solid-state analogue stage, the Valve Isis has its own dedicated50 VA mains transformer, ensuring galvanic isolation between the digital andanalogue sections of the player.

The Isis has an isolated balanced output, and inkeeping with the spirit of the valve circuit topology, we have opted to use a transformerin this position. This balancing transformer is made to the same exactingstandards of that found in the Ios MC amplifier.

We hope that you enjoy this product as much as we haveenjoyed creating it.

All these features amalgamate to create the supremelevel of performance found in the Isis and provide a perfect partner for theRega Osiris amplifier.

DIGITAL SECTION

The digital section is blue printed and selected, withmajor improvements to the mechanism, optical amplifier, DSP core, PLL, masterclock & motor power supplies. Another 10 separate power supply regulatorsare used in the digital circuit. The motor, user interface processor &display also have their own power supply. The digital stage also has its own 50VA transformer again ensuring galvanic isolation. The mechanism is graded andmatched to the servo circuits, to ensure the servo and optical amplifiers areworking at their optimum point, improving error correction and playability.

The headroom of the optical amplifier has beenimproved by 10% by increasing the voltage in the power supply.

DIGITAL

This revolutionary player has been five years indesign. Rega, together with its design partners have pioneered a highlyadvanced servo controller that uses the latest signal processing techniques toensure that the raw data that is recovered from the disc is of the very highestquality. Because our fully digital servo can use highly advanced algorithms,the laser spot is kept in the optimum position for data recovery in terms offocus, size and tracking.

EXTRA ERROR CORRECTION

Previous chip-sets always made compromises on errorcorrection. Formerly it was possible to have good jog resistance or bettermusical performance. The Rega chip-set allows optimum musical performance andoptimised jog /vibration resistance.

SUPER-STABLE PHASE LOCKLOOP

The entire IC is clocked via a very special PLL of ourown design. This allows better CD data recovery as well as a big improvement inthe quality of the data delivered to the DAC.

LOW NOISE DIGITAL DESIGN

In the design of our CPU IC, we went to great lengthsto ensure that the data and address bus noise was kept to an absolute minimum.This ensures the ground and signal connections to the DAC are as ‘clean’ as ispossible.

USB INPUT

Allowing direct connection to a laptop or PC via a USBA-B lead to stream internet radio, MP3 or WMA files directly from your computervia the high quality Isis internal DAC. The USB input uses an isolateddouble-clocked USB interface, which permits the digital to analogue stage to beused with a computer USB interface and its own regulated power supply. The USBbenefits once again from galvanic isolation from the main circuitry of the Isisplayer which eliminates the flow of earth currents between the CD and hostcomputer, and eliminate computer power supply noise.

DISC ANALYSIS

The valve Isis will analyse each disc on an individualbasis. During the initialising period (rather like the engine management systemon a modern car which optimises the engine settings to temperature, fuelquality etc.), the Isis will adjust itself to each disc in order to giveoptimal trouble free reading. For this reason the Isis will often play discswith marks or scratches that other players cannot read.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Wavelength: 780 nm

Digital Sampling Frequency: 44.1 kHz

Power Consumption; 46 W

Dimensions (W × H × D): 434 × 112 × 350 mm

Dimension needed to operate (W × H × D): 434 × 200 ×350 mm

Weight: 19.5 kg