Ayon Audio CD-3sx CD Player/DAC/Preamplifier

[Dre_J]

An Equipment Report of the Ayon Audio CD-3sx CD Player/DAC/Preamplifier is now available online:

Ayon Audio CD-3sx CD Player/DAC/Preamplifier
Class A Tube Satisfaction



Yes, it is a digital player that sounds good.

Dre

[MylesBAstor]

Thanks Andre! That was a great review and certainly made me want to hear the unit.

Couple of things for a analog person.

It seems a little strange for the phase switch to be placed on the back of unit. Did I miss that you can also switch absolute phase remotely?

I assume it is using the new 6H30-ER tubes; if so, would have been interesting to hear with the vintage DR series that are a bit better (the ones that BAT championed and can be found but at a cost lately).

Seems to be a great unit for someone looking to digitize their LP collection.

Just to be sure, DSD is kept in the DSD domain in the Ayon?

[Dre_J]

Thanks Andre! That was a great review and certainly made me want to hear the unit.

Couple of things for a analog person.

It seems a little strange for the phase switch to be placed on the back of unit. Did I miss that you can also switch absolute phase remotely?

I assume it is using the new 6H30-ER tubes; if so, would have been interesting to hear with the vintage DR series that are a bit better (the ones that BAT championed and can be found but at a cost lately).

Seems to be a great unit for someone looking to digitize their LP collection.

Just to be sure, DSD is kept in the DSD domain in the Ayon?

Thanks Myles.

To answer your questions:
- The Phase switch is on the rear of the main unit only.
- The output TUBE is the 6H30 (PSE-Triode) according to Ayon literature. I didn't roll any tubes for two reasons. I didn't have any other 6H30's around and Ayon believes the tubes they used were preferable due to reasons mentioned in the review.
- DSD (via the DSD input) is straight to the ES9018 DAC inside the unit. The DSD over USB is sent via the DoP open Standard Method for transferring DSD Audio over PCM Frames . I didn't pull the ES9018 data sheet to study the internal architecture.

Dre