Arcam CDS50 SACD/CD/Network Streaming Player
Australian Hi-Fi 35
the ‘Settings’ menu on the front panel). This
will instantly tell you if new firmware is avail-
able and, if it is, will then give you on-screen
guidance as to how to apply it.
In Use and LIstenIng
sessIons
The first thing you notice when the disc draw-
er opens is that the tray is made of plastic,
rather than of some more robust material,
but I guess this is to be expected at the price
Arcam is asking for the CDS50. Press ‘Play’ (ei-
ther using the front panel transport controls,
or those on the remote or the app) and you’ll
find that the music starts quickly enough,
but if you elect to skip forward a few tracks to
start deeper into a disc, you’ll find the Arcam
quite tardy in doing your bidding. There
didn’t appear to be a track buffer, so you
can’t just press the button multiple times and
have it skip the requisite number of tracks:
it’s instead a kind of ‘push and wait’... ‘push
and wait’ process. To avoid this, simply use
the direct track access controls on the remote
instead, where simply pushing ‘2’ followed by
‘7’ will have the laser sledding immediately to
track 27, with no delay at all.
As for the operation of the remote, I found
it was really smooth, with the added bonus
that while you’re using it, all the buttons are
illuminated with a soft glow, which looks
good no matter what the ambient light condi-
tions are, and certainly helps if you’ve turned
your room lighting down low for added ambi-
ence. The front panel display has three bright-
ness settings: Off, Dim, and Bright. There are
two brightness buttons—one for the CDS50’s
display and one for the display of an Arcam
amp, so you can adjust them individually.
When you do start playing your intended
track, you’re going to be impressed, because
the Arcam CDS50’s performance with ordi-
nary CDs is exceptionally good. Indeed after
several weeks of listening in all my spare time
I’d formed the impression that the sound of
CDs played in the CDS50 was actually superi-
or to what I heard when playing back SACDs.
There wasn’t a lot in it mind you, but I found
the CD sound definitely more to my liking.
Listening to the GN Records hybrid version
of Belafonte at Carnegie Hall, for example,
which is a dual-layer disc of exactly the same
mix, with one layer recorded in SACD and
the other in CD (and not to be confused
with the rather horrible-sounding CD-only
version produced by RCA in 1990), I found
Belafonte’s voice altogether more charismatic
on CD... I seemed to get a better feel for the
warmth of his interpretations. Oddly enough
the high frequencies also seemed a little
cleaner on the CD layer than the SACD layer.
Perhaps the most disconcerting part of my ob-
servations was that the SACD sound from the
CDS50 was as good as the SACD sound I’ve
have heard from any other SACD player... so
it’s not that the SACD format is in any way in-
ferior, but more that Arcam has really excelled
itself in optimising the sound with CDs.
Listening to a straight CD (Big White’s
debut album, ‘Teenage Dreams’), the echo-lad-
en jangly guitars that kick off the opener, Bell
Towers, were delivered with a superb lightness
and the sound of sustained sound was glo-
riously textured. The kick drum sound was
impressively solid, and the bass guitar sound-
ed depthy and tuneful, providing a perfect
underpinning for the band. The Arcam’s abil-
ity at the other end of the spectrum was then
perfectly demonstrated on Tuesday, where
the delicate sound of the tapped cymbals
contrasted beautifully with the fluid high fre-
quencies (and associated harmonics) of Anna
McDonald’s violin. I would suggest listening
especially to the close-out to this track, which
dies away quietly and brilliantly smoothly to
a perfect silence, to gain an idea of the superb
performance of which this player is capable.
Perhaps one of the best demonstrations
of the Arcam CDS50’s ability to be revealing
of the music you play using it is if you listen
to the sound of I Can’t Tell, which is the
only track on Teenage Dreams that was not
recorded at Damien Gerard Studios in Sydney
(having been recorded in Berlin at Paul Lincke
Studios). At the risk of making a bad pun,
you certainly can tell—at least you can when
listening to it using the Arcam CDS50—that
this track is the ‘odd man out’ on this CD.The cymbals are not as shimmery as on the
other tracks and the sound of the kick drum
not nearly so well-defined... to name just two
of the most obvious differences. You Don’t Get
Much is another track that’s revealing of the
CDS50’s superior performance, because rather
than the sound coming straight out of digital
black, Big White has decided to record several
seconds of studio ‘noise’ (though ‘lack of
noise’ would be a better descriptor) before the
strummed acoustic guitar introduces the vo-
cal, which allowed me to hear how beautifully
the Arcam CDS50 handled super-low-lev-
el noise, without introducing any digital
artefacts or extraneous sounds, along with a
complete lack of any dither or jitter effects.
Excellent performance.
The sound of the Arcam was equally good
when reproducing digital signals supplied to
it ‘via the ether’ or hardwired to the digital
inputs, and all bitrates and file types were
handled with equal aplomb, though every
now and then the Arcam’s front panel display
would display ‘No Signal’ during playback,
which was obviously incorrect, so there was
obviously some type of programming bug in
my review player. The display also showed
‘44.1kHz’ even when playing tracks with
higher bit-rates. I expect both issues will have
been sorted by the time you’re reading this
review.
However, it’s the quality of the sound that’s
important, and I found that no matter wheth-
er I was playing music at 44.1/16 or at higher
resolutions, the Arcam CDS50 always sounded
unfailingly smooth and sweet, with superb
dynamics and incredible frequency exten-
sion. The quietness of the backgrounds was a
stand-out, as was the total lack of distortion...
particularly at very low recorded levels.ConCLUsI on
No matter whether you’re old-school and
prefer playing CDs (or SACDs) or new-
school (and prefer to play rips, downloads or
streams... wired or wirelessly), the new Arcam
CDS50 does it all... and it does it all easily and
gracefully whilst also delivering supremely
good sound.