May 2013
PrimaLuna ProLogue Premium CD Player / USB DAC
A fantastic piece of vacuum tubed digital gear!
Review By Tom Lyle
Back in the day, and by back
in the day I mean the 1990s, more than once I would be lent a CD player with a
vacuum tube output stage. Many of these were DIY modifications, some were not.
Even though these designs resulted in something that I'd wouldn't want to listen
to on a long term basis, it wasn't difficult to hear why some would add tubes to
the output stage of a CD player. In those days CD playback was in need of
serious help. Most CD players were barely listenable, so at that time the only
benefits they had over the LP were their silent background and convenience, yet
in the majority of cases at the very least these tubes added to the output stage
made CD playback give me less of a headache. When vacuum tubes were added to
these older CD players they were used in large part as filters to protect our
ears from the players harsh upper-midrange and steely treble that was endemic to
these players, but in the majority of cases the problem was that adding tubes to
the player's output stage only added another layer of circuitry that confused
the signal and thus the music, and made the signal far less transparent. There
were many problems with these older players that had not yet been addressed,
offenders such as jitter was just one of the problems that haven't yet been
properly identified, and were rarely dealt with. These days, CD playback (often
called digital playback in my listening room) has come a long way. And that is a
huge understatement.
PrimaLuna manufactures tube products, CD players
included. But PrimaLuna is not using tubes in their ProLogue Premium CD Player
as an attempt to cover or "fix" anything. PrimaLuna is a perfect example of a
company that manufactures components that use tubes that do not have a "tube"
sound in the classic definition of the word, instead PrimaLuna uses good
engineering sense to exploit the benefits of vacuum tubes with very, very few of
their disadvantages. PrimaLuna's most recent foray into CD playback was their
ProLogue Eight (now called the ProLogue Classic), which was very well received
by the audiophile press and customers alike. PrimaLuna has taken this design to
the next level, with a significant number of upgrades. Plus, very importantly,
the ability to connect one's USB cable to the player's internal
digital-to-analog converter.
Place
In their literature PrimaLuna tout's the component's
SuperTubeClock, the player's tube-based date clocking devise that uses a
mini-triode vacuum tube in place of the usual solid-state oscillator that is
found in most CD players as a major reason why this component's sound is so
wonderful. It is likely that many will assume that the half-dozen glowing tubes
atop the player's cabinet is also largely responsible for this CD player setting
it apart from the multitude of CD players and DACs being sold these days,
high-end or otherwise. Given PrimaLuna's track record of producing excellent
sounding tube gear I'm more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt
on the SuperTubeClock's effectiveness, not only because on PrimaLuna's website
there is an entire section devoted to this clock, which in the Premium there are
not one but two, replete with
graphs and technical explanations as related to the workings of the clock as
proof of its effectiveness. The SuperTubeClock, asserts PrimaLuna, "significantly
lowered the amount of jitter and noise" in the player, and this increases the
amount of detail retrieval, as well as an increase in dynamics and "musicality".
Some may assume this statement is no more than promotional hyperbole, but let me
remind you that this is coming from the company that manufactures my reference
for small tube amps, the PrimaLuna DiaLoguemonoblocs, and I'm certainly not the
only audiophile throughout the world that has their modern sounding tube gear
residing in their systems.
The
Premium (as I'm going to call this component from this point forward) is a based
on a dual-mono design, and PrimaLuna claims that it is the first CD player to
use dual vacuum tube rectification. They adapted the power supply from their
rather popular ProLogue Premium preamplifier, and is built using "high quality"
(one would hope) resistors, MOSFETs, and Solen capacitors to for "superior
transient response, detail, and channel separation". The output stage of the
Premium is dual-mono, using one 5AR4 rectifier tube and two 12AU7’s per
channel, and uses a "state-of-the-art" Burr Brown 192kHz/24-bit upsampling
circuit as well as a Burr Brown DAC chip. Other "premium" (ahem) parts of the
Premium include polypropylene coupling capacitors and triple pi power supply
filters (these are also called capacitor input filters), plus, the player's
analog and digital devices are separated by custom designed isolation
transformers. Included in the price of the Premium is their Super IV op-amp,
which was at one point available only as an option in many of PrimaLuna's
components.
Entire
This CD player is a looker. The entire cabinet is made
from very heavy steel, and as with other PrimaLuna components has a five-step "automotive
quality" finish, which each coat hand-rubbed and polished. To me, its cabinet
design matches the other components in PrimaLuna's more expensive DiaLogue line.
It is thick aluminum face plate is available in silver or black, the review
sample is silver. In fact, the Premium looks like one of PrimaLuna's amplifiers,
but instead of a solid faceplate it has a CD drawer, transport controls, and a
rectangular LED screen. In my review of the PrimaLuna DiaLogue Six monoblock
power amplifiers in Enjoy
the Music.com's
June/July 2010 issue I described the tube cage of the amp, and the
Premium is practically identical. The tube cage was conceived by a noted
European high-end kitchen appliance designer, and in lieu of hiding the tubes
from view it is constructed of vertical slats spaced far enough apart to get a
clear view of these tubes, with glass side panels enhancing its esthetics. In a
darkened room the combination of the cage's vertical slats and its glass slides
will allow the tubes to emit their soothing glow. The Premium comes with a
heavy-gauge black anodized aluminum remote control with rather large sliver
push-buttons that doubles for use with other PrimaLuna components.
The ProLogue Premium's USB input will be of
interest to many listeners including Yours Truly. In my listening room as well
as in the second system in a common space of the house, the large majority of
the digital tunes come from a music server. PrimaLuna says that the USB input
that is accessed on its rear panel was hardly a design afterthought. After
researching many interface options they decided on using the hiFace made by the
Italian audio manufacturer M2Tech. Enjoy The Music readers are likely to recall
the praise this small piece of equipment received in its review
in the February 2010 issue. PrimaLuna goes on to say that this
USB input converter drastically reduces the amount of jitter even before it
reaches the Premium's SuperTubeClock. The Premium's USB input is capable of
decoding a digital signal of a sample rate of up to192 kHz with word length of
24 bits.
The PrimaLuna's M2Tech USB interface gave me a
leg up on the set-up of the use of the USB input. M2Tech recommends one use
kernel streaming on the output settings of the host computer. Since I had just
reviewed the M2Tech Vaughan DAC in
the March issue, I knew to set my Foobar 2000's preferences to
kernel streaming using the hiFace's driver. Kernel streaming has the advantage
over the more common direct streaming because when playing back files they do
not pass through Windows or Mac operating system's audio mixer, so the native
sample and bit rates are more likely to be preserved. My music streamer is set
up on a PC, a 3.20 GHz Dell Studio XPS PC with 8G RAM running Windows 7. A
gaggle of FLAC files are stored on three different external hard drives, and a
run of DH Labs Silver Sonic USB cable connects the computer to the Premium's USB
input.
The Premium is certainly larger (and heavier)
than most CD players or DACs. At nearly eight inches tall it is going to need a
bit more shelve space. Plus, the tubes need room to breathe. It doesn't need as
much space as a tubed power amp, because the tubes aren't at large as most power
amps so they don't get nearly as warm. Still, I placed the Premium on the second
the top shelf on my Arcici Suspense rack with more than three inches of space
above it. The Arcici does not have back or side panels, so heat was never an
issue.
On the simply laid-out rear panel's IEC power
cord outlet I used a Virtual Dynamics power cable for a short time, but finally
settled on an Audio Art Statement II for remainder of the review. The analog
outputs of the Premium are unbalanced RCAs, I used a pair of either MIT 330 Plus
or Audio Art IC-3 SE interconnects to connect it to a Balanced Audio
Technologies (BAT) VK-3iX tube preamp, with the preamp's XLR outs wired with MIT
Shotgun S3.3 balanced interconnects to a Pass Labs X350.5 power amplifier. For
the current hungry amp I used an Audio Art Statement I power cable for the
beginning of the review, and a Virtual Dynamics cable for the remainder. The
speakers are Sound Lab Dynastat hybrid electrostatic panels along with a
Velodyne HGS-15b sub. All the front end equipment, including the PrimaLuna
Premium CD, was connected to a PS Audio Power Plant AC regenerator. The speakers
and subwoofer were connected to a Chang Lightspeed power conditioner. The room
is treated with Echobuster acoustic treatment panels and filled LP and CD
shelves. Since I've been very busy lately, room is in need of a good tidying up.
Lucky
I've
gotten used to decent digital sound in my listening rooms, as I've been lucky
enough to acquire some pretty decent digital playback gear over the last few
years. The lowest priced unit is the very useful and more than listenable Oppo
universal disc player, which not only has quite decent sound on standard Red
Book CDs, can also send a signal with a higher resolution from DVDs to an
outboard DAC from its S/PDIF coax output. Plus, I can spin one of the forty or
more SACDs that are in my collection. I also have on hand the Wadia 121 Decoding
Computer, Benchmark Media DAC1USB, and I just got finished reviewing the rather
opulent (and more expensive) M2Tech Vaughan DAC/Digital Preamplifier. Even
though the M2Tech decoder is quite a step up from these two other DACs, it
proves a rather salient point – they are all cut from the same digital sonic
clothe. Yes, like I said, the M2Tech sounds much better, but how much better?
Much better when placed in a system that can appreciate the differences, as well
as have an owner that can also appreciate the differences between it and its
more "affordable" brethren. However, it does not go as far as reinventing
digital sound. I don't want to sound like a snob here, I am thankful that
digital playback has come so far, and I would be happy to live with any of the
above components perhaps not forever, but at least for quite a while. Yet when I
placed the PrimaLuna Premium in my system, I realized that what we have here is
the first digital playback mechanism that I've heard in quite a while that
sounds markedly different from the rest of these great sounding digital playback
devices, and I mean that in a good way, since "different" doesn't always mean "superior".
The Premium is indeed superior, especially when listening to it in my rather
revealing system, but even when using it in my second system. The lets keep in
mind that this "lesser" of the two systems contains PrimaLuna tube amplifiers
driving a pair of EgglestonWorks floorstanders, not too shabby by any measure,
but certainly less revealing than the big rig in my main room.
Regardless of what I said above, I'm not about to
deny that tubes are likely the cause of the player sounding different that the
other fine pieces of digital gear in my system, but it is certainly a surprise
that it sounds better than this other gear given the track record of tube-based
output sections of the digital components I've heard before. But let's be real:
those tube-based output sections weren't designed by PrimaLuna in 2013.
I wish it were possible to direct one to a single
musical example, or at least one track that is a perfect demonstration of the
Premium’s prowess with a digital signal. I can't, only because there wasn't
any music that I played through the Premium that didn't demonstrate the unit's
strengths. To describe the Premium's sound is to describe the sound of excellent
vacuum tube gear, that is, with all the advantages of tube sound without any of
the advantages, but in this case as applied to digital playback. When a
layperson (in other words, a non-audiophile) describes why they sometimes don't
like CD as opposed to LP playback, many claim that the sound of CDs are "flat"
sounding, or "harsh". I don't think that any of the modern CD players or DAC
that have passed through my system in the last decade or so can by any stretch
of the imagination be described as possessing these negative traits, but when
these machines are directly compared to the Premium, these characteristics come
to fore. No, I wouldn't describe the sound of the Wadia 121 Decoding Computer as
harsh, but I would consider its upper mids and lower treble as harsh-er
when directly compared to the Premium.
I wouldn't in any way call the dynamics of the M2Tech Vaughan as "flat".
In fact this unit has the best soundstage of any DAC I've ever heard in my
system! But compared to the dynamic distance that the Premium puts between two
instruments playing at the same time at the same volume as being more separated
in its sonic field of view, and thus the Vaughan's dynamic distance sounds flat-er.
As is the case with most system's response to
DACs vs. physical CD playback, the Premium demonstrates that yes, playing the
music through the USB input of the Premium provides all the advantages of
hard-drive playback, but in this case one can compare the two directly using the
exact same electronics, minus the CD drive, yet plus the hiFace digital
interface. Very nice! On the CD of Keen Bakels conducting the Bournemouth SO in
Vaughan Williams 7th Symphony
(Antarctica) on Naxos, it was practically a showpiece for the
Premium's ability to reproduce a Red Book symphonic CD. The symphony's last
parts are best known for its deep organ tones, but was immediately noticeable
was the metallic percussion used in the score, which includes cymbals, triangle,
gong, bells, and xylophone, and it seems that at least half of those listed were
being used in the back row of the orchestra in the beginning of the fifth
movement. The Premium was able to reproduce the acoustic of Wessex Hall's rear
wall as well as the instrument's direct sound, of course, reflecting the sound
of those instruments towards the listener. The instrumentation builds throughout
the movement, demonstrating that the CD player's sound with the disc in the
drawer is certainly an acceptable substitute for hooking up a USB cable. Not
that the USB playback is bettered, but at least one is not disproportionately
punished for playing physical media.
Feel
There are a few audiophiles out there (well, at least
one that I read about) that feel that audio reviews are worthless, claiming that
reviewers give positive reviews to every piece of equipment that is sent to
them. They are just tools of the audio industry. If one only points to the fact
that the print magazines regularly make lists of every piece of gear that they
reviewed over the last few years labeling this listing "recommended components"
or the "editors choices", then yes, this might be very misleading. But it should
be obvious to all, other than those (or that one person) making this claim, that
they are missing the point. Outwardly, it may seem as reviewers love every
sample they receive. As a reviewer, I am lucky to hear such a relatively large
sample of what is being offered to audiophiles. But from my vantage point it
seems that nowadays even the smallest manufacturers are well versed in how to
make a more than decent piece of high-end audio equipment. They are not
producing junk. It is the reviewers job to point out to audiophiles what the
characteristics of said component are, and it is the audiophile's job to
determine whether the piece or pieces of equipment fit not only with the rest of
the system, but also their lifestyle. And a case in point is the PrimaLuna
ProLogue Premium CD player.
If
my praise of the Premium lends one to believe that it is the "perfect" CD player
or DAC, think again. Yes, the sound it produced in my system is wonderful and
extremely close to the best digital sound that I could imagine at this point in
digital's relatively early history. And given PrimaLuna's history of producing
gear with an amazing price to performance ratio, the Premium fits right in. But
at the same time one should consider exactly what this component is: a CD player
with a USB input.
System matching can and should also be considered, as well as
what one's listening habits are at present and in the foreseeable future. There
are some that might have darker sounding associated gear that might find the
sound of the Premium as too much of a good thing, so those with systems leaning
to this less resolving characteristic in the first place will not be able to
take advantage of the Premium's less aggressive sound when compared to most
other digital playback gear. There are also others that might want more than
just a USB input enabling them to hook up other disc transports, etc., to the
Premium, and so we are again back to the subject of system matching, and I don't
think anyone would recommend someone change their entire system or complete
change their listening habits to accommodate a single piece of front-end gear.
Also, there is the relatively minor fact that the Premium's display does not
display the resolution of the incoming digital signal when listening through its
USB input, and if this bothers them they might want to investigate on-screen
options for one's server if that bothers them. Added to all this, there might be
some audiophiles out there that shudder at the thought of using a piece of tube
gear as a digital playback device, not willing to make space on their shelf for
the hotter running, larger than usual cabinet of the Premium, and perhaps not
willing to purchase another piece of gear for DVDs, SACDs, etc. To those folks I
say: Your loss. The PrimaLuna Premium is a fantastic piece of digital listening
gear, and if one has to "adapt" to its unique looks or operation, then so be it.
Recommended? You bet.
Specifications
Type: CD player / USB DAC / transport
Output Voltage: 2V (+/- 0.5dB)
Freq. Response: 20 Hz to 20 kHz (+/- 0.5dB)
Tube Compliment: Four 12AU7 and two 5AR4
Distortion and Noise: Below -96dB
Channel Separation: 90dB
Dynamic Range: Greater than 120dB
Analog Outputs: One pair RCA
Digital Outputs: One coaxial / One TosLink optical
Digital Input: One USB
Dimensions: 14.5" x 8" x 15.5" (WxHxD)
Weight: 33 lbs.
Price: $3799
Company Information
PrimaLuna-USA
1042 N. Mountain Ave
#B PMB406
Upland, CA 91786
Voice: (909) 931-0219
Website: www.PrimaLuna-USA.com