Atoll CD100, $2200

(3.75h, 17.32w. 12D, 16lbs)

Made In France! 3 Year Warranty

Atoll’s CD-100 is a fabulous CD player that takes CDs closer to the “best possible” compared to just a “cut above” the other guys- that virtually all hail from Asia.

Musically, CD-100 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 runs ten regulated supplies. TEN! It uses a dedicated 30VA transformer for the digital stages. It uses a 10VA transformer for the analog stages. It has filter caps of 21,450uF which lend to the muscular bass. This amount of capacitance is more apt to be found in a 60w amplifier.

CD-100 uses current-voltage stages that are a notch above CD-80, 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. Atoll runs discrete, symmetrical line stage circuitry after the DAC section.

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, VIVID color balance that makes skin tones a bit ghoulish vs warm.

By the way, to appreciate these differences among great disc players, you should have resolving companion electronics and speakers. If you’re running great electronics like Atoll, Bryston, and Mac, you’re in the right neighborhood to unlock the improvements among the above players. If you’re running more mainstream NAD, Adcom, Rotel, Parasound, Cambridge etc, CD-100 will be more than enough disc player to outperform your electronics. Please consider CD100 with these brands. You’ll update to Atoll electronics after you perceive how good their CD100 is!

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.