- YBA unveils Design One, a new SACD player
- Claims it’s the first “transportable” such model ever made
- It’s not exactly an easily-portable model though
Despite the format dividing audiophiles, Super Audio CDs are apparently making a comeback, and the clear bellwether sign of a retro resurgence is when hi-fi brands start making tech to play retired formats. Well, that’s happening with SACDs, sure enough.
French hi-fi brand YBA has just unveiled its Design One, which is apparently the world’s first-ever “transportable” SACD player, running on its built-in batteries, and the company claims you can bring it to cafes and offices to use.
Banish from your mind the kind of retro-inspired compact model or feature-packed portable player that we’ve been covering quite frequently over the last few months — those are pocketable, but this one is not so much.
It weighs 1.34kg, measures 18.8 x 16.6 x 4cm, and has quite an angular body with sharp corners and easy-to-accidentally-press buttons. I don’t see myself slipping this in my backpack when I’m off to do some work at the cafe, but then I feel less strongly about SACD compared to some in the TechRadar office.
Perhaps that’s why it’s billed as a “transportable” model rather than a ‘portable’ one; an elephant is technically transportable if you have enough tranquilizer and a crane, but you wouldn’t call one portable. But beyond the eyebrow-raising description, it seems like it has a few specs that’ll impress certain audiophiles.
A feature-packed SACD player
The Design One has quite a few outputs for a portable model: you can output through 3.5mm or 4.4mm for headphones, RCA, SPDIF coax and USB-C (though it doesn’t support SACD on the latter).
It has an AKM DAC, frequency response of 20Hz-40kHz, output impedance of 0.4 ohms (that’s with 3.5mm; it’s 0.8 ohms for 4.4mm) and a signal-to-noise ratio at 125 decibels.
The unit will, apparently, last for up to 5.5 hours on a single charge, and can be plugged in via USB-C to power (via a separate port than the USB-C audio out, so you can do both at the same time). There’s a 2.79-inch screen, and beautifully retro mechanical switches which can be customized in use.
Given the shape and size of Design One, it’s hard to view it as being a portable CD player akin to many of the other new models being released. But it does still clearly to have value as a smaller-sized player of SACDs, and regular old CDs. It could fit quite nicely into a desktop set-up, or in a compact hi-fi setup, to save you buying a bigger option…
…if you can stomach the price. It’s set to cost $1,699 (about £1,250, AU$2,500) when it goes on sale later in May. So it’s certainly not a budget model.
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tom.bedford@hotmail.co.uk (Tom Bedford)
