WHAT’S in a single letter, eh? Well, in the case of Naim Audio’s new entry-level CD player, the CD5si – which replaces the CD5i – plenty.
According to Naim, there are “numerous fundamental improvements and advances” under the skin that are aimed at extracting the best from the Red Book format. Well, many of us should be pleased that Naim is still standing firmly behind the CD format, which the company describes as the world’s most popular. Given the gazillion silver discs still in circulation, don’t you dare believe stories about the impending demise of CD …
The CD5si has some significant upgrades – for starters, the DAC chip has been upgraded to a Burr Brown PCM1793, which is similar to the one on Naim’s higher end digital players.
Then, there’s a more stable DAC clock, higher voltage power supply rails, revised analogue filter, and a spanking new transport section and laser optics. These, says Naim, up the performance ante considerably at the entry-level (which, of course, is relative to the state of your bank balance).
However, Naim is making sure not to fix things that aren’t broken, so the new machine retains its predecessor’s best features and Naim signatures … like the legendary swing-out drawer, an in-house and industry standard CD transport, laser tracking and digital error correction software, discreet analogue output electronics, and a die-cast, non-magnetic enclosure.
We’ll be gunning for one to test drive, for sure …
