Parasound Halo CD 1 CD player

[Stereophile]

<p><img class="story_image" src="http://www.stereophile.com/images/613fifth.promo__0.jpg" /></p> In his August 2008 <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/content/inside-sooloos-sourceone">Follow-Up</a> to Jon Iverson's and Kalman Rubinson's coverage of Sooloos's Source:One (which was the component in the Sooloos system of the time that output an analog audio signal), John Atkinson wrote: "Looking at the [inside of the] Source:One, at the front center you have the network interface card; on the left you have a switching power supply; at the rear center is an industrial PC with its familiar but unused I/O jacks at the front and its vertically mounted RAM board at the back; and at the right is the RME Hammerfall soundcard plugged into the PC's PCI slot. . . . The significance of this photo is that what ostensibly is an audio component is actually a PC dedicated to one specific function. I think this is increasingly what we will see in high-end audio components."

<p>
The JA of 2008 was prescient. For the high-performance audio market, it makes a lot of sense to process digital audio data via sophisticated software running on a dedicated personal computer.

</p><p>
Which brings us to Parasound's Halo CD 1 CD player ($4500). Some might find it questionable to release today, as one's first digital-disc player, a machine that plays only "Red Book" CDs, rather than a universal or near-universal (non

[Source: http://www.stereophile.com/content/parasound-halo-cd-1-cd-player-0]

 

[Bachtoven]

If that offered multi-channel SACD, I'd be all over it!