QUAD’s new flagship range of audio electronics expands with the arrival of a CD transport, engineered to make the most of fast-spinning 12cm silver discs. The Platina CDT joins the Platina Integrated amplifier and Platina Stream network player to complete QUAD’s top-tier series, complementing its Platina siblings in design and ethos.
The Platina CDT shares the same steel chassis and anti-resonance feet, accompanied by a thick aluminium front panel. Its fascia is adorned by the power button and a black rectangular panel hosting a subtle trio of function buttons, the CD loading tray and a 4.3in colour display.
The latter matches the IPS LCD screen on the Platina Integrated and Platina Stream, delivering crisply rendered text and graphics with a wide viewing angle, metadata support and custom settings to meet its owner’s requirements.
QUAD’s Platina Integrated amp includes a built-in DAC, so it’s entirely logical for QUAD to develop a matching CD transport. But while the CDT is an obvious match for its Platina siblings aesthetically and sonically, its focus on the mechanics of data retrieval and signal integrity through elevated engineering makes it a CD-spinning companion for any high-performance DAC or amp with digital inputs.
Compared to CD players, which incorporate DAC and analogue output circuitry in the same chassis as the disc transport mechanism, the Platina CD transport takes full advantage of separating the transport hardware from the DAC, thus eliminating potential sources of electrical noise and distortion.
The CDT’s anti-resonance chassis, internal architecture and shielded transport mechanism designed to mitigate the sonically deleterious effects of vibrations and interference. From the disc tray to the optical and coaxial digital outputs, every element has been engineered for high durability, quiet operation and fidelity.
At the heart of the Platina CDT lies a high-end CD mechanism, specially selected for its build quality and disc stability, coupled to a custom-designed CD servo control system for maximum precision and accuracy. Every element of the laser assembly, servo and control architecture – including a robust dual-core processing framework – has been optimised to minimise read errors, jitter and other forms of distortion.
A TCXO (Temperature-Compensated Crystal Oscillator) provides a precise master clock for the servo and decoder section. Powered by its own independent, ultra-low-noise linear regulator and grounding scheme to eradicate power supply induced jitter, it acts as a rock-solid timing reference. This ensures that the extracted S/PDIF digital output is stable and free of timing errors, delivering audibly cleaner transients, tighter imaging and greater musical coherence.
Incorporating a high-specification, ultra-low-noise Noratel toroidal transformer, QUAD has designed the internal power architecture to isolate critical pathways. Power supplies to the motor and laser servo circuits are isolated from the decoder stage that processes the digital audio signal, while power to the MCU and display is also kept entirely separate from components in the signal path.
This attention to detail, isolating the S/PDIF signal from all sources of electrical noise as it takes a direct route from the servo to the output stage, ensures the data stream remains meticulously clean and stable for optimal processing by the connected DAC.
There was a time when CD players or transports would only play regular ‘Red Book’ 16-bit/44.1kHz CDs, a standard established in 1980 to enable the storage of up to 74 minutes and 44 seconds of high-quality digital audio on a 12cm optical disc. The Platina CDT offers greater versatility, also playing CD-R, CD-RW and data CDs and incorporating a USB-A port at the back to plug in USB storage devices. FLAC, WAV, WMA, AAC, MP3 and APE audio files are supported, each to their highest resolution, making the Platina CDT a hi-res audio transport as well as a CD-spinner.
As with data read from CDs, audio files accessed from USB devices benefit from the Platina CDT’s sophisticated internal design, including the same high-precision clock system and low-noise output architecture, and a dedicated power supply to the USB input.
It’s available from April with a choice of black or silver fascia, at an RRP of £1,499.