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Copland CDA-289

This Scandinavian company goes back to the drawing board, and brings out a CD player that merely looks like the previous one.

(Reprinted from issue 55 of UHF Magazine. To purchase the issue, click here.)
You won't be surprised to hear that we are big fans of this Swedish company, since we own two of their preamplifiers. But our preamps are tube units, and building a solid state CD player requires, we presume, a distinct set of skills. Earlier Copland players left us a little cool. The original one, the 277 (UHF No. 47) was deficient in rhythm. An updated one, reviewed in the following issue was better, but we still weren't quite happy. Now comes this one, in a case similar to that of the earlier 288. The box is large for that of a CD player, the same one used for the company's tube power amplifiers. In most systems it will be, for better or for worse, the most visible item on the shelf.
     Inside is a Sony transport with an extra buffer circuit to protect the digital signal against noise. There are two Burr-Brown PCM63 converter chips per channel, with the output of the two being averaged. Like some other designers, Copland allows the transport and the converter to "talk" to each other so that they can "agree" on the timing and reduce jitter.
     As we shall see, the company has finally gotten things right.
     We opened with Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre from Reference Recordings' remarkable Mephisto & Co. (RR-82CD). "It's a winner," said Albert, praising the smoothness of the orchestral sound, and at the same time its extraordinary dynamic impact. Gerard liked the clear timbres of individual instruments — the flute, violin and viola in particular — as well as the solidity of the bottom end. Lower strings were especially effective, with lots of body. Reine liked the strings and the remarkable image, but found the brass a little forward.
     Even more instruments are used in Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben with the same orchestra (RR-83CD), and it can become incoherent sludge if the system can't make sense of all that sound. The Copland did well, placing lots of space among the different instrumental layers. Once again the strings were especially attractive, and the fiery brass invited a heavy hand with the volume control. Too heavy! We played the disc again at more reasonable volume, but the Copland's powerful dynamics (aided by HDCD, needless to say) still pinned us in our seats now and then.
     The disc confirmed what we had already noticed: there's nothing even remotely thin about the bottom end of the music emerging from this player.
     With some earlier Copland players the sense of rhythm had been less than strong, but that is not the case of the CDA-289. The rollicking fun of the Cavatina from The Barber of Seville (on Hyperion Knight's The Magnificent Steinway, Golden String GSCD031) came through intact. The Steinway's distinctive tone was well rendered, with richness and warmth, though Reine found the attacks harder than with our reference player.
     The player's strong sense of rhythm was amply confirmed by our next selection: Papa John, from the HDCD version of You Can't Take My Blues (Audioquest AQCD1041). We liked Doug McLeod's voice and his acoustic guitar as well, but both are upstaged by Heather Hardy's awesome violin solo ("the Paganini of the blues," said Reine), and it mesmerized us. There is no sharp edge to the sound of this player, and so the violin came out rather round and warm rather than sharp and strident, but it lost none of its powerful energy for all that. How do you keep your body still through a performance like that? Albert, who is not fond of jazz violin, liked this version better than before. Gerard commented that the Copland, with its powerful low end, seemed to shift energy away from the midrange and into the lower frequencies. "You can still hear it all, but the action is at the bottom."
     All of the discs thus far had been HDCD-encoded, but we added two conventional discs to the session. The first, Margie Gibson's Say It With Music (Sheffield CD-36) was superb, her voice a little smoothed out from the way we usually hear it, but clear and moving as she slid over each note of Irving Berlin's The Best Thing For You. The cello and string bass were full, and the stereo image was especially strong, with no ambiguity. "It's a little different from the reference," said Albert, "but it's difficult to say which version is right."
     The final selection was the Arensky Piano Trio No. 1 (Dorian DOR-90146). Both Albert and Gerard wrote the same word in their notebooks: "magnificent." The smoothness of the two string instruments at the start of the Elegia was especially striking, the cello full and resonant. By the time Valerie Tryon's piano came in, the harmony — that most fragile of all musical values — was perfect. There was no mist, no imprecision, no granularity, nothing to spoil this marvelous trio's great emotional effect. When the music faded into silence, we were sorry it was over.

     Not surprisingly, the Copland did outstandingly well in our technical tests. The 100 Hz square wave (shown above) was perfectly square, with considerable overshoot (the sharp points on the wave), but well damped. The low-level 1 kHz sine wave (shown below) is difficult for a CD player to reproduce well, because it has few bits to work with when it is operating 60 decibels below maximum. As you can see from the photo above, the result was very good, with only a small amount of noise thickening the trace somewhat.

     On normal tracks we could not detect the presence of jitter. When we played the test tracks that are sliced through by a calibrated laser, it took a major cut (2.4 mm across) to make jitter appear. The Copland played most of the track set, though some momentary errors appeared on the track with the 3 mm cut.
     An expensive player, this Copland CDA-289? No doubt, but in its own way a bargain.

Model: Copland CDA-289
Price (in Canada): $4200
Dimensions (cm): 43 x 40 x 17
Warranty: one year, transferable
Most liked: Clear, dynamic, refined sound
Least liked: Oversized retro look won't go with everything
Verdict: At last, Copland gets it right

CROSSTALK

     Most people aren't looking for a player in this price range, but the ones who are haven't been too sure what to buy. There are plenty of expensive players, to be sure, but a surprising number are old technology, easily outperformed by today's sub-$2000 players.
     So here's one I can recommend. It really is superior to cheaper players, and its strengths are important to the enjoyment of music, not just to sonics. It really has everything you'd probably put on your wish list: smooth highs without shrillness, a rich and clear midrange, a full bottom end, strong dynamics, and excellent reproduction of fine detail. Have you got a collection of HDCD discs? This machine plays them.
     Before you change your amplifier or speakers, try them with this player. They might be better than you think.
--Gerard Rejskind

     "There goes the reference," said I silently as soon as the first few notes filled the listening room. The sound was refined, soft, yet detailed, and, without warning, tremendous energy was unleashed. A player of contrasts, thought I, as the next piece filled the room with majestic double bass strings, bringing me a few rows closer to the resonating beasts.
     Layers of sound had no trouble weaving their themes into a coherent whole; details sparkled in space, yes, but always remained natural, not etched and sharp-edged, as electronic details often are. Voices were clear, warm and wonderfully expressive.
     I loved the rich midrange and the particularly impressive and solid bass, but what I found most striking about this Copland player was its energy. It has an amazing ability to lull you with its refinement but, when it reveals a musical climax, it does it so suddenly and with such power that you'll feel you've been vaporized in your seat and reassembled in the next instant.
     And that's at normal volume!
--Albert Simon

     Whether it's with orchestra, solo piano, violin, guitar or the human voice, this Copland dishes out so much emotion that you are completely taken with the music. That is its dominant quality, and it is surely due to the extraordinary dynamics, which reveal perfectly the virtuosity of the artists and let the emotional impact through.
     But there is more. There is an excellent image, great clarity resulting from the remarkable separation of timbres, perfect audibility of even pianissimo lyrics -- no surprise, for nothing gets by this player. Every flourish, every ornamental note, every trill is highly detailed. In all pieces, the rhythm is impeccable and irresistible. The lower strings, such as the cello and the double bass, are rich.
     Which brings me to a certain reservation about the higher strings, specifically the violin in its upper registers. I find it sometimes aggressive, especially, at times, at the peak of a dramatic crescendo which it somewhat spoils.
     That said, this Copland has what it takes to spoil the audiophile who is less sensitive than I am to those high notes.
--Reine Lessard

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