Just as the Compact Disc medium decides to fight back with a vengeance Sir Elton John was interviewed on breakfast telly earlier this week in his “record room” as he calls it. He actually said, and I quote “nobody buys CDs anymore do they?” But he is soooo wrong. Talking to the amazing staff at my favourite local music vending emporium they assure me that the CD is healthier and selling more now than it has been for years! And the perfect player to ride that wave of increased enthusiasm is quite probably this little beauty…..The Lyngdorf CD-2.

Pure Audio Drive

Lyngdorf is the sister brand of Steinway, the people who produce the legendary grand pianos and as such shares the same revolutionary company DNA, and the important thing about this little marvel is that it has been designed specifically for Red Book digital audio only. Using this pure audio drive is simpler and better. All players that use a multi-format drive will inherently produce more digital noise and also be clunky and slow in use. Lyngdorf offer cutting edge research and development and boast that this player ranks up there with the very best on the market.

Happy Accident!

We came across the Lyngdorf CD-2 by happy accident really. We really wanted to stock and sell the Lyngdorf range of amplifiers (also lovely by the way), but we were told that in order to sell those we had to stock the CD player too. Initially we were not that keen but said yes anyway! A few days later, after taking delivery and having spent a little time running them in we were gradually coming to the conclusion that whatever we played through it was sounding rather lovely and customers began agreeing with us too. A couple of them even preferring the CD-2 to some very expensive alternative brand disc spinners….mentioning no Naims!

Blues Pills

For the purposes of supplying music to this blog I dug out my copy of the first album by Blues Pills. This is another one of those albums that I bought just because I thought that the artwork was so evocative of the hippie era long since lost. I also thought how could a record label called Nuclear Blast not be worth a punt! It hasn’t disappointed either. The combination of great female vocals from Elin Larsson with stinging guitar work from Dorian Sorriaux backed up by a powerhouse rhythm section of Zack Anderson on bass duties and Cory Berry on drums.

A Time Of Endless Flux

A bit of background here… Marijke is hailed as the mother of psychedelic art. She helped shape the imagery of the sixties as it exists in the nation's collective memory today. She turned the era's music into colours that pop, shapes that ooze and illogical patterns that evoked the creativity blossoming in the time of endless flux. It was the ultimate vision of hippie aesthetics, Koger-Dunham created album art and costumes for The Beatles, painted Eric Clapton's and George Harrison's guitars and painted the mural on the theatre that debuted the musical "Hair." She was enmeshed in both the musical and visual arts as member of "The Fool," a design collective and band, allowing her to seamlessly translate from sound to sight. Her imagery is dripping with freedom and passion. Plants shoot up with reckless abandon only to melt into washes of hallucinatory hues. Everything is growing and changing; mirroring the politics of the time.

Adding To The Vibe

Anyway I think that in this instance the cover art adds to the vibe and helps the music to come to life. I chose the track “Astralplane” and was immediately astounded by the detail retrieval of this player. This track has a double tracked guitar with one in the left channel and the other in the right channel. This combined with the atmospheric addition of organ by Robert Wallin was producing a soundstage that you positively jump into! Lovely bluesy old Fleetwood Mac at their prime kind of sound with power and passion and as for that guitar soloing….just wow! The CD-2 was able to portray both power and delicacy so that the bass drums and guitar never overpowers the passionate vocal performance and it is still easy to pick out and follow the organ part in the background. Nuances that are lost on so many other players.

Lee Morgan’s Charisma

Charisma by lee morgan… quintessential mid-'60s hard bop

Next on the playlist was this lovely slice of classic Blue Note jazz by Lee Morgan who is joined here by the altoist Jackie Mclean, Hank Mobley on tenor, pianist Cedar Walton, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Billy Higgins is probably most famous for the Sidewinder album but I prefer this one, which was recorded with his band towards the end of 1966 just as Flower Power was beginning to catch on, and a bit of that is reflected in the blissed out summery jazzy grooves on this wondrous outing. One of my all favourite Blue Note albums (and there are lots of them!). Now you cannot go wrong choosing any of the tracks on this album but I decided to go for the aptly named “Somethin’ Cute”. I love this track for its sense of open-ness and space around all the instruments and the way that you can really hear the sheer joy of all the musicians and their interplay with each other. Just gorgeous, and the CD-2 lays bare the exuberance of the piano and bass in the background as the two saxophones and trumpet sparkle and shimmer in between the loudspeakers.

Shockingly Good

So on this basis Sir Elton could and should be well and truly proved wrong! This CD spinner is shockingly good. It proves that there is a lot of life left in the old format yet. Indeed this Lyngdorf CD-2 may well be the perfect CD player. It sounds great, it looks great and it is quick and easy to use. None of that clunky bluray/streamer mechanism malarkey that means your CD player takes ages to even twig what kind of disc it has in it and then makes you press the buttons multiple times as it takes an age to respond the button press! It out performs a whole host of CD players that would have cost you an awful lot of money even only going back a few years, let alone older players. Heck, it even out performs a lot of very much more expensive CD players that you can buy today, so on that basis alone you have to put this one on your audition list.

The End Bit

If your interest has been piqued and you would like a listen to the amazing Lyngdorf CD-2 for yourself then please feel free to contact us at Audio T Cheltenham. The kettle is always on and we always have biscuits too!