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North Star Sapphire - CD player

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Product: Sapphire CD player
Manufacturer: North Star - Italy
Cost: £1500 YMMV
Reviewer: Maarten van Casteren - TNT UK
Reviewed: September 2008

Introduction

North Star is a small Italian high-end company and several of their products have already been reviewed on TNT in the past. Specifically the CD players, or the transports and DACs to be more precise, have had very good reviews, here and elsewhere. North Star also produce impressive looking amplifiers, but are most famous for their CD players. These all feature upsampling, a preference I'm not completely sure I share. But their reputation is such that I wantedto try and see what upsampling could do, when done right.

The Sapphire player looks really good, in a stylish and understatedway, and the quality of the casework and the finish is fantastic. Itfeels extremely solid and robust, while still being relatively compactand easy to accommodate in a standard rack. The case is completelyclosed and nicely finished all around and looks very good on the topspot of your system. The 8 little buttons on the front are a nicetouch and add to the feeling of luxury. At the back are single-endedas well as balanced outputs, but there's no digital output, showingthat North Star have some confidence in the DAC that's build into thisplayer. The Sapphire upsamples the digital signal to 196/24 and uses thesame basic architecture as the famous North Star Extremo DAC.

The inside is a picture of order and organisation. Almost un-Italian,I cannot prevent myself thinking. Power flows from right to leftthrough this machine, while the signal travels front to back. Somewhere in between they meet and numbers are converted to music.North Star take power supply very serious: the main transformer ismassive, for a CD player, and has separate secondaries for theanalogue and digital parts. I counted at least 12 separatevoltage regulators: always a good sign. All electronics are locatedon a single big circuit board which takes up most of the inside.Layout is spacious and very neat.

An impressive player then, at least on paper. The only problem I hadwith it is that it didn't perform perfectly when combined with myElectrocompaniet power amplifier. Electrocompaniet use FTT, FloatingTransformer Technology, which keeps earth and signal ground separate.This means signal ground is floating and my Django passive preampdoesn't do anything to change this. The Sapphire didn't like thisarrangement very much, with the control logic conking out once a dayor so, leaving the player locked. When I changed to the VincentSP-331MK power amp everything was fine. For the rest of the reviewperiod this player was a picture of excellent design, style andergonomics.

The sound

North Star claim that the player only needs a few hours of burn in.My review sample had been used for about 6 hours and 'should be fine'.Although this is a refreshing change from the usual claim thatperformance will keep improving during the first 500 hours or so, itturned out that the player did need a little bit more than 6 hours. Inmy experience most players are more or less fine after about 50 hours,and the Sapphire wasn't an exception.

This is a player that sounds different than my own Astin Trew AT3500,this much was immediately clear. While the AT3500 is warm and rich,the Sapphire is very controlled, precise and detailed. The Astin Trewis valve-like and the North Star player more transistor-like. I don'tmean that as a disqualification, as the Sapphire actually has all theadvantages normally associated with transistors without the usualdrawbacks. The same is true for the valviness of the Astin Trew, bythe way, and these two players are both excellent and more differentthan better or worse. It is probably a matter of taste which one youwould prefer, although I ended up liking them both, a lot.

Let's start with the bottom end. The Sapphire's is very wellcontrolled, agile, deep and articulated. It is also quite dry,certainly compared to the AT3500, but definitely not overly dry.It sounds like nothing is being added, no extra warmth and nocolouration, but nothing is being withheld either.It did show that my Astin Trew lacked that last littlebit of control down below, which surprised me, to be honest, and showsthat things can always be better, even if you think they're prettygood already.

The mids are clear, fast, neutral and very transparent. Almost to thepoint of sounding a bit studio-monitor-like, but still neutral enoughto be above any such classification, really. Basically, the mids areclose to perfection. The AT3500 has a bit of richness in the midrangethat the Sapphire lacks, but which one is closer to the truth, if sucha things exists, is difficult to say. The midrange of the North Starcertainly makes a very good point for itself. Voices are reproduced witha lot of presence and realism because of this. In combination with thelow noise floor this transparency allows you to listen deep into thesoundstage and hear details that were difficult to discern before.

The top end is brilliant. It is crisp, detailed, precise, clean, airy,etc. Everything you would expect from a top class CD player. Focus isexcellent and the sound doesn't stick to the speakers at all.Recording atmosphere and venue acoustics are reproduced in a veryconvincing way. It makes this player very engaging and exciting.Strings especially sound very good and more natural than you wouldgenerally expect from a CD player.

Pace, rhythm and timing are excellent too. The precision with whichthis player puts everything in the room helps to unravel complexrhythms without any problem at all. The leading edge of piano notes,for example, is crisp and perfectly placed. The decay, on the otherhand, seems a bit shorter than with most other players I've heard.This does create more 'space' (time actually) between notes and helpsto separate things in space as well as in time. It can, on occasions,also create a certain starkness. Again, if anything, I suspect thatthe Sapphire is closer to the truth than most other players. Afterall, there's also that great resolution and a very low noise floor,so it's not as if anything is being swept under the carpet.

There's an honesty to the sound that can lead to a matter-of-factnessat certain times, but also to great involvement at other times. Itjust depends on the recording. Everything that's on the disk will bereproduced, but nothing will be added, so recordings that need alittle bit of help fare less well. But good recordings are a realtreat with the Sapphire. I'm not saying that it's only good withaudiophile recordings, just that it is at its considerable best withvery good recordings. It is actually kinder to lesser recordings thanyou would expect, but not to the same extend as the Astin Trew.

I did compare the single ended phono outputs to the balanced XLR onestoo. My Django transformer preamp is the perfect tool for the job, asboth inputs go through exactly the same transformers. Balanced is a bitlouder, obviously, but turning the volume down a couple of clicksnicely compensates for that. The difference between the two wasn'tenormous. The single ended outputs sounded slightly more boxed in andgrainy and the balanced outputs were a little bit tighter, hadslightly more spatial information at the top end and showed a fractionmore depth in the soundstage. But I had to compare them head to head toreally notice the difference. On the other hand, once noticed thedifference certainly was significant.

This is an upsampling player, even one that goes the whole way up to192 kHz and 24 bit. My own Astin Trew can upsample to 96/24 bit, but Iprefer the non-upsampling mode, to be honest. The Sapphire shares someof the traits of the Astin Trew when that one is set to upsampling,with a certain thinness in the midrange, a slight lack of substance inthe bass and a soundstage that is wider than normal. Except that inthe Sapphire's case this all works just fine. Bass might be dry, butit is also very tight en deep. The mids are perhaps a bit stark, butof exceptional transparency and that wide soundstage has excellentfocus, probably the best I've ever heard in my system. This set ofcharacteristics does get to you, just like the warmth and richness ofthe Astin Trew, but in a different way. It brings out all the detailand really puts you very close to the music. It certainly iscompletely capable of producing goosebumps. A good example is 'Therevelator' by Gillian Welch. It sounds fantastic on the North Star andputs Gillian and David Rawlings right there in the room with you.In general this combination of qualities works very well withclassical music, where other players might fall on their face whenthings get more complicated but the unflappable North Star simplykeeps things under control no matter what happens.

At the very last moment during the review period a set of Anti Cablesand Anti Interconnects arrived. These solid core cables share some ofthe properties of the Sapphire, especially the precision, crispnessand rhythmic qualities. The combination brought out the best in bothcomponents, and the Sapphire sounded even better than before. Thedifference wasn't huge, but worthwhile nevertheless. Make sure youhear this player in a system that can actually show its qualities,otherwise you might get the wrong impression. Not all systems can keepup with it.

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Conclusion

This is a very fine player. It is more analytical than musical, but notto the point where this could ever be seen as a flaw. It has control andprecision in spades, combined with excellent resolution, bandwidth andfocus. It is a very honest player that gets more information from thedisk than any player I've tried in this price range. And it is cleanand crisp, over the whole frequency range, adding hardly anything ofits own. It is very involving in its own way and can get you veryclose to the musical event. If you're looking for valvelike warmth youmight prefer something else, but otherwise this player is as good asit gets at this price. The fact that it looks great and is a joy touse is a bonus. Highly recommended.

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