Revox - B-225 - Lecteur de CD

Audiophiles who have spent large sums of money on LP playback equipment, like myself, come up with a number of excuses when faced with the thorny problem of reconciling the increasingly widespread acceptance of CDs with their own love of vinyl.
One that I have often heard is that ‘CD obviously does not offer audiophile sound quality, because the companies that made the players withdrew from true hi-fi a few years ago to compete in the “music centre vertical market”’’.
There may be some truth in this, as I think optimising any design to give the best sound quality remains an art, with good engineering only giving the designer 80-90% of the way - even if he or she has an unlimited budget. And designers of products destined for the mass market have to deliver results within budgets that are barely open.
However, the entry of specialist hi-fi companies like Meridian, Mission, Yamaha, Nakamichi and Revox into the CD arena will eventually show whether this is a fair stance to strike or not. In the meantime, I live with the £777 Revox B225 CD player, introduced in the UK in late 1984.
Slide projector


A reasonably large 450x109x332 mm (whd) machine, the B225 was designed to match the range of Revox components that began with the B251 amplifier and B261 tuner. Beautifully made and finished both internally and externally, it has a central tray with a Philips mechanism and optical pick-up, which slides out to load. This tray also has an LCD screen for track and programming information.
On the left side of the tray are the programming controls, including a 0-9 numeric keypad, while on the right side are the usual transport controls, ± push buttons for variable output and headphone level, the headphone jack itself and an on/off/standby button (the machine's memories remain powered as long as the player is connected to the mains).
The rear panel has the usual Revox two-pole socket, a socket for an optional wired remote control (an infrared unit is available if the CD player is used as part of a suitable full Revox system) and two pairs of phono sockets, one pair of fixed levels, the other variable.



Internally, two motherboards with all switches run behind the front panel on either side of the transport tray, and daughter boards connect to them, minimising discrete wiring. The left boards cover transport and programming facilities; the two on the right carry the familiar Philips chipset with its 4x oversampling digital filter combined with 14-bit D/A conversion, while analogue filtering, de-noising and output are via the ubiquitous 5532 two-channel audio-quality op-amp. A relay mutes the output while the circuit stabilises on power-up.
Discs can be played in two ways, direct or programmed. Songs can be accessed in the latter mode by stepping sequentially through the disc or by pressing a two-digit number corresponding to the desired track on the numeric keypad and pressing ‘play’. A red button transfers control to the programming section and up to 19 selections can be programmed into the B225's memory. These can be tracks, a continuous selection of tracks, i.e. tracks 4-10 inclusive can count as one programming selection, or timed sections.

This function is performed by setting the display to time mode and entering the desired start and stop times with the keypad. Once set, the programme can be ‘previewed’ by using ± pushbutton