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Shadows: The CD228 is so good that Raysonic really missed the boat by not adding digital and analog inputs as Ayon Audio's CD5 so very cleverly did. The latter also mounts its valves upright which makes for easier swaps and runs the superior 6H30s. It's this lack of future proofing which cost the CD228 an award that for sonics would have been certain. That said, one conclusion—relevant only if you have followed my audiophile sojourns for a bit—is that the CD228 matched my personal Esoteric UX-1/Yamamoto YDA-01 transport/converter combo. That in itself was telling. The UX-1 uses the most massive VRDS transport Esoteric has ever made, the Raysonic a far cheaper Philips. More telling yet, my two-box source uses no tubes, the Raysonic runs four in dual-differential mode plus one for voltage regulation. It's plain that very similar results can be achieved either way. I strongly suspect that this has more to do with power supply beefiness, noise isolation and output drive than specific output devices or up/oversampling and digital filter wizardry.
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Fog: For example,
the Corda StageDAC by Meier Audio also in for review offers 9 different oversampling/filter combinations plus 3 response compensation curves to wildly - er, complexificate user options. The thing is, those digital processing options are far more subtle in effect than your average cable swap.
Burr Brown, AKM, Wolfson, Cirrus Logic and Texas Instruments all make quality silicon. 32 bits seem better than 16, 8 times upsampling more advanced than none. I's easy to fall for figures with their implied promises of audible progress. Just because some part measured with steady-state lab signals has cracked the S/N barrier of 130dB dynamic range (or whatever the latest record attempt would have to beat) does not mean it'll translate in meaningful ways from paper to ear.
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Light: The CD228 sounds exceptionally pressurized, driven, bursting with color in a sunny harvest-time and not humid-tropics sense. Its dense but volatile textures don't blanket out dynamics. Without knowing that my Yamamoto converter is single-ended but transistor, zero feedback but no valves, instinct would point at the Raysonic's 6922s as responsible for these qualities. But, most audiophiles not intimately familiar with many different tubed devices to enjoy a more encompassing perspective would immediately associate specific liabilities too. They'd predict truncated extremes, smoothed-over transients, higher noise floors with lower resolution, lack of separation, euphonic colorations and more. Not here. These tubes don't see any reactive speaker loads, they don't do any heavy lifting.
Assumptions: What gear like the CD228 teaches us—if we've got the necessary context—is that little is as it seems. Only case-by-case investigations make any ultimate sense if we want to know what something actually sounds like. Assigning specific cause/effect relationships remains impossible unless facilities were in place to, for example, compare tube to transistor rectification for an otherwise unchanged circuit. Wojciech Pacula, the editor of the Polish online magazine HighFidelity.pl, was privy to exactly that during an Ancient Audio experiment at the Krakow Audiophile Society. It's something he mentions in his review of their Silver Grand Monos which makes instructive reading. The SET amp designer's surprised conclusion became to favor big capacitors over small ones, transistor over tube rectification; paper-in-oil caps only as bypasses in the power supply, modern Teflon caps in the direct signal path instead; and an ultra-low impedance power supply with heavy regulation. Much of it went counter to established tenets for his class of devices.
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Implementation: Rich but not creamy, powerful but not pushy. It's descriptors like these which most do justice to the CD228. It's a clearly superior machine to the CD168 stable mate which itself was far more similar to the CD128 than not. Unless Raysonic has made massive strides in digital circuitry since—possible but not likely—it's most persuasive to suspect the colossal power supply. Again, sufficient investigations into numerous digital source components over the years, with various filter and sampling options, have me convinced that the latter aren't where fundamental changes are made these day. It has to be that butch power supply. Twice the price, twice the performance over the CD168?
Gains: Not mathematically, not exactly. But, as far as these things go, very relevant by conveying a significant step up. I noticed this quickly during the break-in phase when I had the CD228 leashed up to headphones which previously ran off the April Music Stello CDT100 / DA100 Signature combo. The performance character suddenly pumped up from the inside out like a body after a good workout. The improvements were in solidity, robustness, vitality and more powerful tone colors and most appreciated with transducers centimeters from the ear drums where headphones put 'em.
Comparisons: For quick character sketches, we'll compare the CD228 to my customary Esoteric/Yamamoto combo, Poland's Ancient Audio Lektor Prime (Philips CD-PRO2 transport, dual-differential circuit with 2 x 6H30 output stage - €10,000) and France's Metronome CD One T (modified Philips CD-PRO2 transport, dual-differential circuit with 2 x 6922 output stage - €5,000).
Esoteric/Yamamoto: The YDA-01 is a bass champ yet surprisingly, the Raysonic proved its true equal to make this juxtaposition a draw in matters of weightiness and impact. On transients, the CD228 was a tad rounder by downplaying a degree of incisiveness in favor of quite voluptuous tone colors. With close-mike'd piano wildly hammered—George Winston's "Spanish Caravan" for example—the Raysonic injected a small flash of glare at higher volumes which the Yamamoto did not, leading me to suspect that a serious tube roller could probably take things farther still. The YDA-01's noise floor might have been somewhat lower to focus even more on ambient hall data whereas the CD228 retaliated with greater fleshiness and image density. I'd adjudge these two-box source systems as occupying the same rung on the performance ladder to be equals while still separated by fractions of flavor and personality differences.
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Ancient Audio: The Lektor Prime had more sparkle and fire above the upper midrange than the Raysonic but noticeably less oomph and wallop down below. The 6922s of the CD228 sounded warmer than the Polish 6H30s, not as lit up and articulated, less silvery and more earthy and portly. The Ancient had more sting and farfield finesse, the Ray more rumble and nearfield weight. Again, sonic equals overall but clearly not the same.
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Metronome Technologies: Running two NOS Philips 6922s for the Ray's current-production four, the CD One T was the obvious leader of this informal grouping. It combined the low-frequency gumption and slam of the Yamamoto/Raysonic fraction with the transient grip of the Yamamoto and the ambient recovery and treble extension of the Yamamoto/Ancient Audio presentations. If I were shopping in this budget range up to the Ancient Audio's €10,000, desired a single-box solution and did not insist on USB/Firewire socketry, the Metronome would be the apparent choice.
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The wrap: As is true for amplifiers and preamplifier, power supplies really are not not in the signal path. As Andreas Hoffman of Octave Audio in Germany put it tartly, advances in high-end audio electronics nowadays are made "at the periphery". That includes power supplies which many curiously regard as separate from the main 'sound-making' circuitry. Raysonic's CD228 proves the fallacy of this viewpoint and how 80-percenters—"power supplies are 80% of the sound"—surely can't be far off the mark with their allocation of what contributes how much to the final outcome.
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Within the Raysonic Audio line, this two-box machine is the clear king. Versus the competition, it holds up very well up to twice its own price which however doesn't mean that something priced far closer to its own sticker couldn't wield the bigger - um, stick. The CD228 majors in what tubes implemented well are generally known for, albeit without incurring most the usual liabilities or accepted trade-offs even though intense separation and surgical leading-edge speed aren't its strongest suits. But if you desire tonal and dynamic weightiness and dense harmonics with only minimal overall softening, this Chinese/Canadian player is a definite choice. Also, its amp-direct option is far superior to most such schemes and rather more than a carry-u-over until funds for a dedicated active preamp materialize. If Raysonic sees fit to add at least one S/PDIF digital input—to accept USB data via an interface like April Music's $349 Stello U2—they'd have a true award winner on their hands. As is, the sonics are already there. And many who'd consider a tubed machine in the first place may care little as yet about iPod & Co. It's for them the CD228 is meant. |
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Quality of packing: Very good.
Reusability of packing: A few times.
Ease of unpacking/repacking: No issues.
Condition of component received: Flawless.
Completeness of delivery: Includes remote control, spindle puck, power cord and owner's manual.
Human interactions: On time but strangely evasive with hard facts about circuit specifics.
Pricing: High value for money.
Final comments & suggestions: Not future proof due to lack of any digital inputs.
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