Primare's latest entry-level CD player is a direct replacement for the similarly priced D20 and was designed by a new man on the Primare team, Bjorn Holmqvist. It's a stunning looking machine with build quality that could grace a player at twice the price. The lozenge shaped display and disc drawer, along with a simple selection of keys around them, makes for a pleasing front panel.
Unfortunately the busy system remote lets the experience down a little as its density for those without Primare systems is a distraction and you have to keep your finger on the eject button for a few seconds to get a response. The same goes for eject on the player itself. The CD21's tendency to turn itself off if left unused for ten minutes is also a nuisance that undermines ultimate sound quality unless you leave it on pause or repeat play all the time, but that'll wear it out. It may be that Primare has only done it to comply with an EU regulation but even so...
The back panel offers a few more sockets than you would usually get at this price. For a start it has a so-called AES/EBU digital output on an XLR socket which delivers a 110ohm electrical signal for the few high end DACs and processors that have a matching input. There's also an RS232 connector for service engineers and multiroom installers, and the latter will also be interested in the remote IR connector, as you might be yourself if you want to hide the CD21 in a cupboard. Most of us however are likely to use the electrical or optical digital outputs and the standard RCA phono analogue connections.
Inside the box there's a DVD-ROM transport mech, which Primare dubs DVS, and while slow to load it is very fast at accessing tracks. Its bitstream is sent to a DIR1703 receiver which was selected for its ability to suppress that bain of CD sound - jitter. In contrast to much of the competition the CD21 eschews upsampling, Primare feels that this processing introduces its own form of distortion, a problem that Primare was presumably able to counteract in its D31 which does upsample.
The CD21 has a balanced digital to analogue converter using a pair of PCM1738 chips per channel, an arrangement that keeps noise to a minimum by comparing two versions of the same signal as they exit the DAC, ignoring the spurious data.
Performance
Clearly a capable and entertaining player this Primare is hard to criticise for the money, by which I mean that you have to push it very hard through a revealing system to hear its limitations. At normal levels with good and average recordings it has an excellent sense of solidity that comes from good stereo separation, producing large scale imaging in depth, height and width. The degree to which this is apparent depends on the quality of recording but with pretty well everything we tried it managed to carve out the shape and placement of the instruments and voices. As a result, discs sound more realistic and you get a stronger sense that the musicians are playing in the room.
It proved equal to the task of extracting energy too. With a dense and powerful recording of ten musicians laying down intense grooves, the Primare delivered in full effect, extracting the light and shade as well as the glory of the anthems. It also made sense of tracks that can often sound dense and frantic. This was thanks to inherently good resolution of the small sounds that can be masked by bigger ones.
Simpler arrangements are equally well handled albeit with a slight sense that the treble is a little smoother than usual, this makes discs that are a little brash or hard through the mid sound that much nicer without undermining detail retrieval. You get a strong sense of presence with a decent recording, harmonics are well resolved and reverb is clearly presented, be it natural or artificial. This is undoubtedly an engaging player, it makes it very difficult to stop a good album even if you are charged with the job of reviewing the player.
Sometimes you get a slight sense of extra fullness in the upper bass with the CD21, an emphasis that brings out the best in instruments like double bass and drums. This could be a result of the smoothness in the treble as it's the high frequencies that bring definition to even the lowest notes. I only managed to undermine its sense of composure once when playing a favourite disc in anger, this revealed a hint of hardness to the midrange. To be fair this was in the context of a very revealing (see expensive/unforgiving) system which is more analytical than you'd usually have with a player at this price.
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 The CD21 is a very capable and engaging player. It combines fine build quality with equally impressive sound and anyone considering an Arcam or Cyrus would do well to put this on their shortest shortlist.
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