Top Classe CD

摘要

However hard they may try, proponents of multichannel music are not going to convince certain audiophiles that anything more than just two channels are needed for sonic bliss. Canadian company Classe, a manufacturer that also produces multichannel players, has taken the decision to produce a top-end two-channel-only CD player - despite its internals employing multichannel components. What it has done, in a breathtaking display of lateral thinking, is force-feed all this capacity into optimised stereo playback. As a result, the CDP-202 has odd capabilities, such as DVD-Audio playback mixed down to stereo, and you can-if you're the sort who doesn't object to watching a feature film on a mobile phone -view a video DVD on its front-panel LCD control panel. Wisely, Classe realised that most DVD-As need to be operated through a menu, and this facility proved useful. With the exception of SACD, HD DVD and Blu-ray discs, this machine doesn't seem to have a problem with anything. The TEAC slot-loading drive, which handles the discs with impeccable grace and is winningly preferable to a clunky tray (and is also found in the company's flagship CDP-300 DVD player), reads all other forms of 5in discs, including recordable CD and DVD, MP3, WMA and even DTS discs, upsampling them to 24-bit/192kHz prior to D/A conversion.