CD player Product of the Year 2011 Audiolab 8200CD

“ To sum up, the Audiolab 8200CD is a truly exceptional product�
What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision ( Awards 2010) names the 8200CD its CD Player Product of the Year

The Awards 2010 issue of What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision sees the Audiolab 8200CD claim the CD Player Product of the Year Award. This is an incredible result, not least when you consider how highly the review team rated the outgoing champion. Well done Audiolab! !

You' ll probably already be aware that the Audiolab 8200CD is brilliant as it took the Product of the Year gong in the CD players category, in the 2010 Awards. If even that high praise falls short of convincing you of the Audiolab' s quality, its performance against its fiercest rivals should seal the deal.

Since then it' s been subject to a price hike of £ 30 and some running changes. The tweaks amount to a clearer, higher contrast display, extra digital filter options and an improved power supply arrangement.

For some companies this would be enough to merit official Mk2 status. Not Audiolab; the product name remains the same.

Organised but never clinical

In many ways the 8200CD has a similar sonic character to the Cyrus CD6 SE. Both players master in detail and neutrality, ensuring you hear your music as it was intended to be heard, but the Audiolab stretches ahead of its most well-respected of rivals in fluidity and dynamics, which adds up in the long run to greater musicality.

While most CD players are designed purely for CD playback, the award winning 8200CD has been created with flexibility firmly in mind. Their architecture is perhaps best described as a » DAC + CD¼ , rather than as a CD player in the traditional sense. The DAC ( Digital-to-Analogue Converter) is the cornerstone of their design, which is why Audiolab has chosen the Sabre 32-bit audio DAC from ESS Technology to carry out D-to-A conversion.

The provision of digital inputs – optical, coaxial and USB – means the 8200CD can be used to deliver top-quality sound from all kinds of digital sources, including audio files from computers and other media devices. Thus, all music benefits from the superb sound quality produced by the players¼ DAC and discrete Class A output stages.

Comprised of over 1700 components using precision SMT manufacturing on a 4 layer PCB, the Audiolab 8200CD is the most advanced electronic design in Audiolab’ s impressive history.

Specification Audiolab 8200CD

Output Level: RCA: 2.05V RMS? XLR: 4.1V RMS

Frequency Response: 20Hz - 20kHz ± 0.2dB

Total Harmonic Distortion: RCA:  0.0025% ? XLR:  0.008%

Crosstalk @ 1KHz: RCA:  120dB XLR:  130dB

Dynamic Range ' A' wtd: RCA:  98dB XLR:  110dB