SOME manufacturers may have already abandoned ship when it comes to CD, but the billions of silver discs in circulation will be glad to know they’re about to get a new player (geddit, geddit?), courtesy of Parasound, the American company that’s making quite a name for itself in the affordable high-end stakes.
The CD 1, complementing Parasound’s flagship Halo range products, has been making the rounds at exhibitions in prototype guise since late last year, but we can tell you that it should finally start shipping in September.
Martin Harding (pic), Parasound’s international marketing manager who was in Kuala Lumpur on July 2, admits that while the company is going against the trend with a CD player, it is confident this decision is justified.
“There are still many people playing CDs and lots of discs out there. Besides, owners of the Halo products would also want a source to match the rest of the range,” he says.
Although Parasound has yet to fix a price, Harding says the CD 1 will retail for US$4,500-5,000.
The “bit perfect” CD 1 uses a CD ROM and an Intel computer running Linux with proprietary software developed by Holm Acoustics of Denmark, who also designed the DAC.
Parasound claims the CD 1 achieves near-flawless accuracy and has barely measurable jitter. It will play only discs written in the Red Book format.
Will the CD 1 change the future of CD playback as we know it? Well, let us get our hands on one later in the year and tell you more about this potential game-changer.
