Naim CD555 Reference CD Player

First shown and demonstrated at The Hi-fi and Home Entertainment Show at Heathrow in September 2005, Naim's reference CD player, the CD555 with 555 PS delivers the ultimate musical performance from a CD.

The CD555 makes no attempt to play DVDs, DVD-As or SACDs. It does not have a digital output. Nor does it have a variable output. The CD555 simply plays CDs and at that it excels. We are confident that it is the best CD player ever.

Key features of this fabulous player include a separate power supply from a transformer secondary winding, which is triple regulated, right through to the critical master clock and de-jittering circuitry. Special attention has also been paid to reducing capacitive coupling of high frequency noise from other supplies into this super quiet clock supply through interconnect cables and wiring looms. Two Burndy interconnects between the power supply and head unit discretely carry the digital and analogue supplies, and extend the principle of reducing capacitive coupling between power supplies as far as possible.

The power supply incorporates significant upgrades over existing designs. More regulators have been used to isolate the supplies to various parts of the circuit, minimising their interaction.

The CD555 Digital-to-Analogue Converters are mounted in a "quiet room". Apart from ensuring that all critical signals reaching the DAC have immeasurably low jitter the chips are inside a shielded enclosure to keep their environment free of the varying electric and magnetic fields that inevitably occur in a CD player, so enabling the converters to do their work, isolated from all external influences.

Other noteworthy design features of the CD555 include:

• Machined, heavy, solid, transport tray to reduce resonance and vibration amplitude.
• High mass design to improve suspension characteristics, providing isolation from the chassis and other components.
• Low infra red reflective coatings around the CD to reduce eye pattern interference and noise.
• Extremely low inertia and low resonance CD clamp.
• Philips CD-Pro mechanism with a die-cast chassis.
• Very heavy brass sub-chassis - separate for digital and analogue electronics.
• Analogue stages, I-to-V conversion, filtering and output driver are built from discrete components.
• Seven-pole output filters.
• Separate low jitter clock circuit with its own multi-stage regulated power supply.
• Post-digital filter de-jitter circuitry to eliminate jitter.
• DAC's are isolated from electric and magnetic fields.
• Motorised top loading door.

Design features of the 555 PS include:

• Seven regulated power supplies including a separate one for the clock circuitry.
• Five secondary windings on the transformer.
• A transformer that is 40 per cent larger than that in the XPS2.
• Separate dedicated analogue and digital output sockets (Burndy) to minimise high frequency noise modulation of analogue supplies.
• Backward compatibility with the CDS3 and CDX2.
• Can be used to enhance the performance of the Naim HDX hard disk player or DAC.
• A low resonance case with isolating feet.