Atoll CD-100 Signature, $2200
(3.75h, 17.32w. 12D, 16lbs)
Made In France! 3 Year Warranty
Atoll’s CD-100 Sig is a fabulous CD player that takes CDs closer to the “best possible” compared to just a “cut above” nice players- that virtually all hail from Asia.
Musically CD-100 Sig has a smooth, non grainy character to its sound. Vinyl fans who dis CDs have nothing to bark about re the Atoll family. The Atolls have big bass and warmth as well, due to substantial power supplies.
CD-100 Sig runs 8 regulated supplies. 8! It uses a dedicated 10VA transformer for the audio stages. It uses a 6VA transformer as well. It has filter caps of 13,032uF which lend to the muscular bass.
CD-100 Sig uses current-voltage stages that are a notch above CD-80 Sig, its lesser brother. This delivers a bit more specific information, detail/imaging, on acoustic instruments and voices.
Please allow me another word on “voices.” Atoll voices the sound of its CD players with exceptional attention to its differential output stages. Most companies plug in a DAC chip with the highest processing power and call it a day. Atoll does not. Atoll uses Burr Brown DACs and runs them with no negative feedback architecture. When you use a chip with more processing, you must also employ more electronic filtering and a bulky power supply to control all that processing. Atoll achieves a more relaxed, realistic flavor in your music.
My video analogy of this is that Atoll sounds like a well tuned TV with accurate colors and skin tones. Many competitors have that too bright, unnatural color balance that makes skin tones a bit creepy vs warm.
My favorite CD player is the Marantz SA-10 for $7500. It weighs 41 pounds, has its own DAC creation and is made in Japan. I’m happy to call the SA-10 a TEN on the bar graph scale of CD listening.
Atoll’s CD-200 Signature is close to the Marantz at $2950. I’d call it a 9.5. At under half the price of SA-10, CD-200 Sig is a bargain! Well, CD-100 Signature isn’t much below CD-200. I’ll rate it a solid 9. The point being, to get the best of the best runs $7500. You can get very close for under half that price. And you’re within spitting distance at just over $2k.
By the way, to appreciate these differences among great disc players, you have to have resolving companion electronics and speakers. If you’re running great electronics like Atoll, Bryston, Rogue and Mac, you’re in the right neighborhood to unlock the differences among the above players. If you’re running more mainstream NAD, Adcom, Rotel, Parasound, Cambridge etc, CD-100 Sig will be more than enough disc player to outperform your electronics.
Please don’t miss that the Atoll CD players above MD-100 also have DAC inputs. Thus, you can take advantage of Atoll’s powerful, warm sound with your streamer. Just run a basic streamer like a Bluesound Node into an Atoll CD player- to evince the benefits of their DAC/voicing expertise.
