The Classé CDP-100 is designed for music systems where the highest performance is required for CD playback. The Classé Design
Team have carefully applied their special knowledge and experience in digital, analog
and mechanical technologies to develop a compact disc player, capable of extracting the most subtle details and enhancing the musical value of your entire CD collection.

Numbers and Time
Digital audio is two-dimensional. By that we mean that digital music signals are represented by numbers (zeroes and ones) and time (the clock, or sampling frequency). It is possible and relatively inexpensive to properly recover the numbers (zeroes and ones) from a CD. Getting the timing right, however, is a different matter. The smallest of timing errors when reconstructing a digital music signal can make the difference between harsh, edgy sound and lush, beautiful music. Timing errors, called jitter and measured in the millionths of a second, cause audible degradation in the playback process.Timing accuracy can only be obtained by attending to details in the mechanical chassis design, the disc transport, the digital signal path and the power supplies. Our goal is to reduce jitter to a few picoseconds at the Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC), which in digital terms is the moment of truth. The CDP-100 is a superb example of balanced engineering, where the chassis, power supplies, transport mechanism and signal path work in concert to deliver the right numbers at precisely the right times. The result is a relaxed and natural sound quality that engages listeners for hours without fatigue.The CDP-100 chassis is made of steel and aluminum. The front panel wrap is an aluminum extrusion with a broad radius on the front corners. The feet are specially designed with Navcom™ LimbSaver® material to reduce the effects of external vibration. As a mechanical system, the chassis provides a rigid, stable, low-vibration platform for the CD transport assembly.The CDP-100 uses the professional-grade Philips VAE1250 CD transport mechanism. In addition to its superb performance as a CD reading platform, the VAE1250 also reads CDR and CDRW. To improve performance, Classé modifies the transport to run in a clock slave mode where the critical, low-jitter Master Clock is positioned near the DACs.

The IMC ™ (Isolated Master Clock).
Transports typically use a crystal oscillator located on a dedicated servo board. Although a logical position for the master oscillator, the servo board is a noisy environment. Because the clock that is used for the transport is also used for the critical D/A conversion, in the CDP-100 this oscillator is moved to a cleaner environment, close to the D/A converters. The transport is then slaved to this Master Clock. The result is an oscillator circuit with extremely low jitter (~2ps) providing precise timing for the D-to-A conversion process. Further sonic improvements are obtained since the small, remaining jitter is randomly distributed across a wide spectrum and does not correlate with the signal in any way. The IMC™ is also responsible for re-clocking the SPDIF digital output. This ensures an impressively low-jitter output for when the CDP-100 is used as a digital source.

Four Layers, Two Systems
The CDP-100 audio board receives the digital signal from the transport, filters it, converts it to analog, filters it again and buffers it for output to a preamplifier. Two systems, digital and analog, reside on this pc board. It uses four layers with two independent layer configurations to keep the systems totally isolated from each other. On the digital area of the board (Master-Clock and digital filter) the top and bottom layers are used for optimum routing of digital signals. The two inner layers contain a low impedance digital ground plane and a layer for optimum routing of digital power supply voltages.On the analog side of the pc board (D/A conversion, analog filtering and output stage) the two middle layers contain the + and – analog supplies. These layers are sandwiched between separate analog ground planes that are poured around the optimized signal path routing. This configuration ensures a fast and uninterrupted signal path with low noise and high performance.

Oversampling and HDCD® Decoding
The Pacific Microsonics® PMD200 is used as both the oversampling filter and HDCD decoder. This is one of the best oversampling filters available, performing oversampling of CD sources to 352.8kHz. HDCD encoded disks are decoded by the PMD200 to fully realize the sonic potential of HDCD discs.

PDXB™ (Pure Differential Cross Balance) D/A conversion
The CDP-100 uses D/A converters from Texas Instruments/Burr-Brown. The PCM1738s are stereo, current-output D/A converters. Their critical supply and reference voltages are bypassed by special, low ESR, OSCON capacitors. Both channels of each stereo DAC have a fully differential push/pull output. That is to say, there are two signals (inverted and non-inverted) associated with each DAC channel. Normally, a single stereo DAC with differential outputs would be sufficient, but the Classé Design Team chose to dedicate one stereo differential DAC per channel in the CDP-100. The result is a total of eight output signals, or four per channel. Each half of the balanced output for a given channel (inverted and non-inverted) is itself converted as a balanced signal. This allows the CDP-100 to have far better stereo separation (separate DAC chips for each channel) and truly balanced audio signals.The CDP-100 uses a total of eight I/V converters, or four per channel. The eight signals are reduced to four (two per channel) by routing each signal pair through a differential amplifier. This gives PDXB™ its strongest advantage over standard differential designs because the differences between these signals during the conversion process are subtracted away, leaving clean and accurate balanced signals, which have remained differential throughout the process.Anti-aliasing filters follow the differential amplifier. They are based on a second order Bessel function. Bessel filters have excellent time domain behavior and impulse response. Because interpolation inside the DAC puts the sampling noise far outside the audio bandwidth, the gentle slope of our filters also works well. The benefits of this topology are apparent in the listening: a very smooth, fast and detailed sonic character.

Power Supply
The CDP-100 makes careful delivery of power and ground a priority, extracting the best performance from the related circuitry. A separate circuit board containing the master power supply and control circuits keeps these potentially noisy components away from the audio signals, both electrically and electromagneticly. Discrete, low noise rectifiers and low ESR capacitors complement the eleven independent power supply regulator stages, providing clean and stable power to sensitive circuitry.

Control
Digital control circuitry in the CDP-100 is executed on separate circuit boards for isolation from the delicate audio processing. In addition to the typical transport controls, the CDP-100 monitors line voltage, frequency, AC phase and ground condition as well as internal temperature. Full control is available from the bi-directional RS-232 port on the rear panel, as well as by IR remote. DC trigger outputs enhance the system automation available from the CDP-100.

Touchscreen
The front panel controls are implemented by way of a TFT touchscreen display, which simplifies the user interface, reduces display-related noise and allows users the convenience of customization. It also adds to aesthetic value of the player, whether used alone or together with other Classé delta series components.

The Classé CDP-100 is designed to look, feel and sound like an audio masterpiece. It will deliver years of musical enjoyment to anyone fortunate enough to acquire it.