AMR at Walrus

AMR

AMR CD-777 CD Player

AMR (Abbingdon Music Research) have traditionally manufactured "top-end" equipment. Their flagship CD-77 and AM-77 (amplifier) are well respected and compete with the best available. The challenge for a company like AMR is to make more affordable products without compromising basic performance levels. We now have the CD-777 "Premier Class" Compact Disk Processor (AMR's description) or CD Player to you and me! Visually, the CD-777 is very similar to it's much more expensive sibling, being just slightly less tall. Obviously something has to give and it's immediately apparent that the build is less heavy, but the finsh is pretty much to the same standard - very impressive indeed.

What is apparent on listening is what a stunning product this is, and how fewer compromises they've had to make. The sound is brilliant at this price level and competes with anything at the same level and considerably higher. A custom high quality top loading mech with stabiliser puck is situated in a metal compartment with sliding metal door. At the heart of the DAC is a unique multibit Philips chip and this is combined with AMR's digital processing which allows the user to select no up or over sampling at all, two levels of upsampling, and two of oversampling, up to 192k. This gives you complete control over the sound (all from the remote control) though I get the impression AMR favour what they call "Direct Mastering" mode (over and up sampling switched off) for the most "organic" sound quality.

Also present are digital phono and USB inputs to make full use of the internal DAC, something missing from even the more expensive CD-77. These are, by the way, at 16bits / 48k maximum. To finish off, two 6H1 triodes are utilised with zero feedback in the output stage. These can usefully be replaced when necessary with a wide variety of common and rare equivalents. Both balanced and single ended outputs are available.

This is the most exciting digital source we have had at this price level and strongly recommend you book as soon as possible for a listen with your favourite discs. You will be very impressed!