LUXMAN D-06 SACD

MJ04.05.2010

Digital sources

The Luxman D-06 is like a music instrument feeding a listener’s ears with what they love: shimmering highs, ponderous lows, supersweet mids, spacious soundstage with ample details and expanding dynamics. It is tuned slightly towards the frequency extremes which is a perfect match for human hearing.

100% reference

Function and form

88%

Ease of use

78%

Sound

100%

Appearance

Luxman’s designers play the card of mechanical perfection and therefore the D-06‘s silvery antiresonant chassis represents an assembly of 1.2mm thick steel panels. Close your eyes and use your knuckles to get the real 16kg heavy concrete block feeling. Open it and find a CD mechanism block with a robust stabilizer, so massive that in Luxman they had to develop a completely new driver to control it. Once the mechanism pulls its alumium drawer with a CD disc inside the pick-up gets locked and the only thing you can hear is the sound recollecting an elevator smoothly starting up. That’s the last sound (apart from music) you would get as during the playback there is nothing to indicate or to sense that something may rotate inside. So even before I started listening I had got impressed by the D-06‘s build.

The D-06 automatically upsamples to 24 bits (it uses twin Burr-Brown PCM1792A converters), plays CD-Rs without hesitance and can be used as a digital transport or a DAC via its coaxial and optical outputs and inputs.

Bass management

Weight

Slam

Articulation

Young Lust (Pink Floyd, The Wall, Mobile Fidelity) comes with a deep and groovy bass line that is best savoured with the help of a good subwoofer. The D-06 proved itself to be a very good source for the subwoofered system: the bass was tight and deep, precisely countoured and served with great authority. The track (and the whole album) through the Luxman became a real treat – the physical feeling and palpability was superior to the Accuphase DP-78 which was a bit drier and less enticing.

Clarity & delicacy

Detail

Air

Transparency

Karajan rides with the devil in Peer Gynt as if he wanted to arrive to the finale ten minutes earlier and a listener is relaxed only with the closing Solveig´s Song, the lyrical love song that is sung by a seductive harp and strings. The Accuphase essentially plays from the midrange offering what is usually thought to be a ´neutral´sound whereas the Luxman shows immediately off its aristocratic dignity and leaves no doubt about its shiny sonic capabilities. If you like the bombastic sound of Krell or the digital stridency of Esoteric gear then do not buy the D-06. The sound of the Luxman is sophisticated to the level of a feminine element: it is refined and gracious and skillfully makes you beg for more.

Tonal accuracy

Timbre

Dynamics

Temporal resolution

Arabian Dance opens with the gentle stroke of a big drum, soft wash of cymbals and the interplay between a triangle and flutes. The first good thing I noticed was that the triangle and the cymbals were individually delineated in the space in the fashion the DG’s hyperrealistic recordings are famous for. The cymbals‘ essence was definitely a metallic one with ever changing inner textures. Some lesser players tend to present these microevents like a kind of white water hiss, which was not the case here. The dynamic drum strokes then go up in their intensity and usher the first burst of the orchestra. Ambient noises like players being a bit restless in their chairs lend a nice touch of reality to the piece.

The dynamic attack of the drums was very attractive and very monumental. The textures of the cymbals were like exploding fireworks full of microdynamic contrasts and the voice of the triangle sang with crystallic purity.

Spatial resolution

Holography

Soundstage width

Soundstage depth

The Luxman enables you to switch between CD and SACD formats, however, upon a hybrid disc´s insertion the SACD is always preferred. If you need to play back the CD layer of an SACD disc then you have to stop the playback and restart the player in the SACD mode.

Is there any criticism? The D-06´s display can be switched off but you cannot switch off the other indicators on its front panel which are pretty bright. If the small golden letters and numbers on the display scare you away do not worry – the size of the ´fonts´can be magnified through the supplied remote. The user interface is what needs an improvement. Access times are slow, you cannot work with indices, skipping to a track takes 3 seconds. Also the ´fast forward/reverse´ functions are not very intuitive.
I missed heavily an analogue variable output - provided you want to use a power amp you will have to invest into a very good preamp or attenuator therefore.

Price as reviewed:185 000,- Kč

Recommended resellers

HTP s.r.o., tel: +420 606 642 175

PP HiFi Otrokovice, tel. +420 603 581 305

Nisel SK, Bratislava, tel. +421 905 203 078

Manufacturer's website: http://www.luxman.com

Associated components

CD players: Vincent CD S-5, Canor CD2 VR Plus, Pioneer PD-S904, Accuphase DP-78
Amplifiers: Accuphase A-60, E-450 a C-11, Canor TP106 VR Plus
Interconnects and speaker cables: Audioquest Pikes Peak, Krautwire Fractal, Kimber Kable Hero, Nordost Tyr a Valhalla, Homegrown Audio DNA, Cardas Cross
Loudspeakers: Usher Mini Dancer One, Mini Dancer Two, Audio Physic Virgo V, Dynaudio SUB-250 a Velodyne SPL-800 Ultra
Power conditioning: Nordost Thor (modifikace), Black Rhodium Polar Oratorio, Vincent Power

Gallery

77%

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