LABORATORY TEST RESULTS

Readers interested in a full technical appraisal of the performance of the Rossini Apex CD player/streamer should continue on and read the LABORATORY REPORT published on the following pages. Readers should note that the results mentioned in the report, tabulated in performance charts and/or displayed using graphsand/orphotographsshouldbeconstrued as applying only to the specific sample tested.

Newport Test Labs used standard ‘Red Book’ 16-bit/44.1kHz test signals to assess the performance of the Rossini Apex CD player/streamer, primarily because music at this digital quality is the most likely to be replayed by consumers using it. But for those of you who are using higherresolution digital signals, look forward to even better performance than the superb performance reported here.

Graph 1 shows distortion for a 1kHz signal at 0dBFS, and the first thing that’s obvious is that the noise floor is 140dB down right across the audio spectrum. There appears to be a tiny bit of noise at the mains frequency (50Hz), but no harmonics. Excellent performance. Also excellent is the lack of harmonic distortion present. The second harmonic at 2kHz is 118dB down (0.00012%), the third at 3kHz is 103dB down (0.0007%), the fourth at 4kHz is 130dB down (0.00003%) and the fifth is 124dB down (0.00006%). It’s vanishingly low distortion that would not even be remotely audible.

Tested using the same test frequency, but at a level of –6dB, performance improves even further, as you can see, with the second harmonic coming in at –128dB (0.00003%), the third harmonic at –109dB (0.00035%). The fourth harmonic (if there is one!) is buried in the noise floor down at –140dB, while the fifth is now at –132dB (0.00002%). Again, none of these distortion components would be audible at all. The dCS Rossini Apex CD delivers a super-clean analogue reconstruction from a digital signal.

At a level of –10dBFS, the noise floor becomes a little lumpier, showing an increase in background noise, but it’s