What Hi Fi Sound and Vision
20 JUN 2008
Chord Electronics Red Standard
Chord doesn’t do half measures. The Red Standard is about as visually spectacular as CD players get. Little else on the market can compete with this player’s extravagant contours and precision build.
It’s the disc-loading method that’s likely to get the most attention. The transport is angled and the domed lid, hinged at the bottom, is manually closed over the disc.
It looks dramatic but it’s a pain to use. There isn’t enough clearance around the CD to allow proper access, and the angle of the transport feels wrong when taking, or placing, the disc. Chord knows there’s an issue; it has included instructions on how to remove the CD cleanly.
Good build and finish
Move away from this aspect of the Red’s design, and things take a massive step forward. Build and finish is as good as we’ve come to expect from Chord, and well up to the elevated standards of this price point.
Take a look inside, and you’ll find unusual digital-to-analogue circuitry and filtering. Rather than simply taking off-the-peg number-crunching solutions from the likes of Burr Brown or Wolfson, Chord has used a novel approach comprising a 64-bit signal processing core and some sophisticated filtering.
There’s even an adjustable buffer, which stores and re-clocks the digital data from the disc before passing it on to the number-crunching circuitry.
Let’s get digital
Unusually for an integrated player, the Red has digital inputs – AES/EBU and optical – so that external sources can make use of its internal DAC. It’s a good thing to do, because it’s a design of considerable sonic quality.
How does the Red Standard sound? In a word: wonderful. This player resolves an exceptional amount of detail. Take a harmonically rich instrument such as the piano on Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, and the Chord reveals its multi-layered sound better than anything else we’ve heard at this price.
This disc spinner continues to impress with denser material such as Mahler’s 10th, particularly in the way it delivers subtle detail without clutter, and without compressing the acoustic space around instruments. You can add class-leading stereo imaging and wide-ranging dynamics to the list of plus points, too.
Enthusiasm in attack
Move onto music with more attack, say Timberland’s Shock Value, and the Chord responds with enthusiasm. Rhythms are delivered with purpose and the Red uncovers a range of textures in the sounds that even our reference Naim CDS3/555PS merely hints at.
Overall, we’re hugely impressed by this Chord player. If you’re lucky enough to be able to buy at this price level, make sure it’s on the shortlist.
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