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The copper strip dissecting the player’s fascia incorporates the display which shines white through a thru-hole grid to spell out informational status. The same copper strip adorns the substantial aluminium remote control, a comprehensive wand which commandeers all the player’s functions in addition to some minor functions of a Neodio amplifier (a trio of integrated units are offered) should your system feature one.
Kudos to Neodio for striving to engineer a resonant-free environment for its on-board electronics and drive mechanism in such a massive chassis. In addition the Origine also features three ball-bearing metal isolation feet which provide further protection against undesirable vibration. The player feels a tad wonky on its feet but the system is well thought-out and the benefits should be real especially if your equipment rack provides even further isolation.
Computer games.
The beauty of a CD player, from my perspective, is ease of setup. Hook up cables into preamp or integrated, pop a CD in and away you go. The computer side of it is never as straightforward and that was the case here. Windows was painless. The player’s USB input locked to my Toshiba laptop (Windows 7) without antics and I had tunes straight away. The Mac story was not as straightforward. My MacBook (Snow Leopard OS) failed to be recognised by the Origine. Zero sound. Nada. Neodio promptly provided a set of drivers, none of which changed the situation.
Then two or three weeks down the track—in the meantime I continued auditions via CD and Windows—a new driver arrived which I eventually managed to get happening. So note that you may require a number of driver downloads to get one that works with your computer/operating system combination. To be fair, driver downloading is dead easy via the provided URL (available from the company’s website) and the drivers are small files that pop up within seconds. Your usual Audio Midi setup will then get you boogying. With computer shenanigans finally sorted I continued with the auditioning process. I mainly used AIFF files ripped via the BitPerfect playback software and the results into the USB input of the Origine were excellent. The player was extremely detailed and nuanced with substantial textural information. Bass power was very solid and quite deep if not as subterranean as the Bricasti DAC for example.
"Sergio Leone" from Jackson Browne’s The Naked Ride Home release features a bowel-shaking bass note towards the end of the track that gets repeated a number of times. The Origine shook the room with its power while my reference AMR does so too but with just a tad more depth. The Origine might have had a slightly leaner rendition of that note. On the other hand the player’s mid-bass range in general was truly outstanding with a tight and fast wallop that propelled the music along. Vocals were another of the Origine’s strengths. I believe the player has a slightly forward—quite subtly so—presentation which projects vocals into the room with terrific presence. Bad recordings or even mediocre ones could add a touch of heat in the upper midrange area but this will be ameliorated in the context of a system with a tad of warmth.
