AYON CD-07s

In the CD-07s the tubes are hidden in its class A output stage which is built around Philips JAN 5687WB triodes that rest in ceramic sockets with gold-plated pins. Gerhard Hirt correctly promotes as short as possible and as simple as possible signal paths which is reflected in the reworked circuits that were developed to optimize the way electrons travel. The analog part of the player is dual mono and works with zero feedback. Its output terminals show very low impedance values to address different audio cable interaction issues - as a result the player should be less sensitive to interconnects. In the course of this review I experimented with few cables to find out that their sonic differences were heard as much as with another players, however, the length of a cable played less important role than with competitors, whis is already good.

Ayon uses R-core transformers with separate windings for input and output stages, the input stage employs its own power filtration system on top of that. As I was not aware of it during the review I did not experiment with how the sound would change when using different power conditioners with the CD-07s and rely upon the standard Supra MD-06 distributor that was available at the time of review. It may be interesting for a future owner therefore to explore benefits of a dedicated power conditioner or a self-filtering cord a la Lessloss DFPC.

The Burr-Brown (PCM1796 and PCM2704) D/A converters work with asynchronous upsampling Burr-Brown SRC4193 chip – a solution that represents industry standard. For PC freaks it is important to know that the USB input of the CD-07s can accept only 16bit/48kHz so the output of 192kHz is based only on upsampled inferior data. If you plan to use high sampling rate digital formats with the Ayon CD-07s, forget about it.