Southend's finest makers of all things hi-fi has replaced a Planet with an Apollo - seems a bit odd to have one CD player named after a celestial body and the next after a Greek god but it's a nice name so we'll let them off. And at least it's a name and not some instantly forgettable number.
The Apollo is a damned funky little player and one which has the ergonomic refinement of Rega's most famous creation the P3 turntable, Apollo's top loading system will appeal to anyone who has used a decent record player, just open the lid and pull the disc from the spindle's sprung grip - no buttons required.
But this is more than a nice box, it's a box full of new bits, most significantly Rega's very own disc operating system developed with a British software company. Usually this element is bought off the shelf from an OEM supplier and comes in a variety of standard forms. By developing its own Rega has been able to build in what it describes as “an enormous amount of memory capacity” which is said to allow data retrieval to meet 'red book' specifications without compromising musical performance. In the past, apparently, this has not been possible due to limited capacity. Now they tell us!
What this 20MB of memory and 32-bit processing capacity actually provides is the ability to carry out both error correction and signal processing without putting the electronics under duress. Combining this software with a Sanyo sourced disc drive has meant that Rega must be the only independent company producing its own transport. Hence the unusual ball chuck disc clamping system which does away with the need for a clamp and makes the disc drive's life easier by reducing weight and thus inertia.
Elsewhere in the Apollo you will find Wolfson's 24-bit Sigma Delta DAC, the latest incarnation of the converter used in the Planet and a well regarded chip that you will find in some expensive players.
Connections are straightforward enough with both optical and electrical digital outputs alongside a single pair of analogue RCA phonos. But the most attractive thing about the Apollo is Rega's colour coded remote handset, it's a whole system device thus well populated but it still looks far nicer than most of the competition.
Performance
In use the Apollo takes a little longer than average initialising a new disc and considerably longer than average initialising itself when first switched on, but as with any CD players best results will be achieved if you let it warm up before using it.
Under these circumstances it can deliver an impressively coherent and clear-cut picture which does a remarkably good job of placing the elements within the soundstage. In fact it does this better than many players costing rather more. On the other hand, detail levels in terms of low-level sounds seem about par for the price so there is something extra being pulled out of the pits and lands that is producing the stereo image.
In some respects the sound is almost sparse or even lean but when you turn the volume up things always get more interesting and there is none of the subtle distortion that usually discourages such activities with affordable players in unaffordable systems, such as those that reviewers try to hang on to!
The Apollo seems to concentrate on the details which matter most to producing a convincing sound, whatever the music. Energy for instance is well catered for if there's some to be extracted as is the case with the Herbie Hancock Quartet of the early eighties, but it won't pretend that a compressed recording is not that way - it reacts pretty precisely to what it's given.
Instrumental and vocal tone is not as colourful as it can be but always seems very real, and there is no escaping lyrical and emotional content whether you're playing Martha Wainwright, Gillian Welch or Bob Dylan. It did a particularly engaging job with the Dylan Live 1966 live recording, reproducing the atmosphere of the event and the nerves of the artist.
As is often the case with Rega products, timing is the key to this player's success, at high or low level it's impossible not to be drawn into the rhythm of the music. Alfred Brendel's piano for instance is tracked precisely in terms of tempo and level and the listener has little difficulty appreciating not only his skill but the quality of the composition being played, especially if it's a Beethoven sonata.
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I haven't had the pleasure of the Rega Planet but its successor is clearly a capable and engaging player that will provide genuine musical insight in the context of both Rega and third-party systems. And while it sounds superb, let's not forget that almost as import are some of the finest ergonomics on the disc playing block.
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