Classe Audio CDP.3
We will be looking at the Classé Audio CDP.3. Received as the kind of audiophile gift most can only dream of. It even came with the original remote which is impressively milled from a single block of aluminum. My first fear was that it was toothless and had some variation of 90's sigma delta technology which, while fine for mere mortals, is not suitable for the higher plains we are traveling to today. Luckily the gods of chance, engineering parts selections, and favorable BOM balance have smiled on us with dual PCM1702-J, a PMD100 filter, a collection Burr Brown OPA604 and OPA2604 op amps sitting in a very competently designed output stage. The output stage as designed by Classé (note the colorful polypropylene capacitors): R306, R309 on the right and R314 on the output of the left DAC are a nice touch to be found only on some of the finest players. They are DC offset nulling resistors hand matched for each DAC. Classé uses them to avoid a decoupling capacitor before th...