New from Quad is its top-of-the-line Platinum range, comprising a CD player/preamplifier (above) and a choice of mono or stereo power amplifiers. All three units go on sale this month at £2500 apiece, with a preamplifier to follow.
The Platinum DMP – Digital Media Player – uses a high-grade CD mechanism made from die-cast aluminium and ABS, the CD tray running on steel rods with sintered bronze bearings. This feeds twin Cirrus Logic 192kHz/24-bit Delta-Sigma digital-to-analogue converters, one per channel running in double differential mode, and with the master clock positioned close to the DACs to minimise jitter.
As well as serving the CD transport, the DAC section can take signals from the DMP's six digital inputs – three optical, two electrical and one USB – and upsample them to 192kHz/24-bit, while the unit also has a choice of balanced XLR or single-ended RCA phono analogue inputs.
Output is also on XLRs or RCAs, with a choice of fixed or variable level, and the DMP uses a four-layer PCB to minimise electromagnetic interaction between digital and analogue signals and the power paths, and a linear power supply section using a low-noise toroidal transformer to feed the 13 regulated supplies.
The Platinum Stereo and Platinum Mono amplifiers use output stages with a large number of output transistors, each one driven from its own driver transistor to maximise linearity, Quad saying that this 'enables virtually flat output impedance to be presented to the loudspeaker across the frequency domain, leading to a more natural dynamic performance throughout the audio spectrum.'
DC servo coupling is used to eliminate capacitors in the signal path, and new PCB layouts have been designed to screen signal paths.
Both amplifiers have a choice of XLR or RCA inputs, and have a 12V trigger connection to allow them to be powered up and down by the Platinum DMP.
The Platinum Stereo power amp delivers 150W per channel, and the Mono 180W.
