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Even though streaming has become the standard, vinyl has already found a permanent place in many a system. We also see that manufacturers have not yet pushed the CD player aside at all. In fact, the medium seems to be enjoying more popularity again. For that reason, we take a look at a nice player from ToneWinner: the TY-1CD at 1195 Euros.
If you want to know more about the – for us – new brand ToneWinner, you can read something in the review of the integrated amplifier we recently tested. There you can read that the brand has been around for 30 years and also supplies OEM products. The AD-PRO3+ is a neat product that sounds fine and performs nicely on the test bench. We are curious to see if the same is true of the TY-1CD.
ToneWinner TY-1CD
The ToneWinner TY-1CD changes hands for 1195 Euro. For that money, you should expect a solid product. There are many players from well-known brands for much less money. Think Cambridge Audio, Marantz, Yamaha, et cetera. They have models for 400 Euro or even less.
ToneWinner tries to convince the buyer with a solid case- thick aluminum, 10Kg! – in black with silver (two-tone), a large, regulated power supply, sturdy optical cd-drive and an ESS9028Q2M dac.
Unfortunately, we can’t find much about the cd-drive itself. We don’t know what type or brand ToneWinner uses. We do know that it is a multi-format drive that can also read files. We only played CDs.
On the back are both analog and digital outputs. No inputs, so the player cannot be used as a dac. We see both single-ended and balanced analog outputs. Digital goes via optical, coax and AES.
What is noticeable when we put the CD player and amplifier op top of each other, is that the display is different: the color is different and the font is different. This is not necessarily a big deal, but it is noticeable.