Hegel has finally released a freshly designed CD player, the newborn is named Viking.
At one time there was Hegel’s Mohican CD player. But its production was stopped some time ago. For the simple reason that necessary parts were no longer available. But the Norwegian manufacturer does not appear to have been going into idle mode regarding cd-players: behind the scenes they were working hard on a replacement. In fact, according to Hegel, the Viking is the best they have ever made. For example, the DAC is constructed in such a way that it reproduces the digital signal as accurately as possible without ‘fancy’ techniques such as upsampling. Both drive and DAC are controlled with one common master clock. That clock is Hegel’s own development, the basis of which is a crystal with very low phase noise.
Analog and digital outputs
Furthermore, according to the manufacturer, the Hegel Viking is housed in a nice cabinet, on the back of which you will find a set of balanced XLR outputs as well as a pair of unbalanced RCA outputs. Should you prefer to use your own DAC, you can use the BNC digital output with a true 75 Ohm impedance.
The Viking costs €4995, available from September this year. On both website and Facebook page nothing can be found about the newcomer at the time of writing this post, surely will change soon!
