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So to the sound, and first of all how the units behaved individually.
I was in the middle of a CD mastering session when the kit arrived, so
quickly
unpacked the HeadMaster to try in with the Sony MDR-CD2000 headphones I'm using for editing. These present a low impedance load (32 ohms) so
need a good, 'solid' feed. The HeadMaster was something of a revelation
here in its effortless control, silky smooth top end and transparency.
I
hadn't anticipated so much of an improvement over the simple home-built
circuit I have been using for some year. The immediacy of headphones
can
quickly tire unless the balance is smooth, well articulated and clean, and this is without doubt the best driver I have used. It came up trumps, too,
substituted for the pre-amplifier in my regular system: transparency and
control again evident regardless of the source material. This is
an extremely
good device and I have no hesitation in recommending it, provided its ultraminimal
facilities are enough for your needs.
The next step was to substitute the AmpMaster for my regular monoblocks,
somewhat ambitiously driving ELS-63s, but again I was struck by the
effortless control: tight, clean and open with excellent imaging, the only obvious limitation being its modest wattage. In a smaller room or with high
efficiency loudspeakers it would perform marvels. Like the HeadMaster
it convinces the ear by ensuring that the signal's harmonic content remains
coherent, something by no means all amplifiers achieve.
CDMaster presented more of a challenge compared to my Meridian 508.24,
since it was hard to tell any difference. Again this is very high
praise.
Identical discs were used for A/B testing, cued together with the levels and polarity carefully matched. The 508 yields a fractionally more transparent
sound stage, perhaps, with the space around musicians just a little more
clearly defined, but in all other respects the Sugden is its equal, which
is a
remarkable achievement at less than two-thirds the cost. It would
certainly see off most competitors in and beyond its price range.
What impressed
me most was its relaxed, natural musical presentation, every strand coherent
and in perspective.
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| Yorkshire-made 'mini-system' has serious ability
Patrick Fraser gets to grips with the latest master plan from one of Britain's
longest-established hi-fi manufacturers.
The HeadMaster did it, in the listening room, with a punch from an iron
fist wrapped in a velvet glove. The HeadMaster is, of course, the
preamp
section of this three-box shoebox-sized separates system from British company
Sugden. But more than that, it was the first of the Bijou series
to
appear, being designed as a stand-alone headphone amp with appeal not just for Sugden owners, but for all those for whom headphone listening is
an experience worth investing in for its own rewards as opposed to being
an occasional two-in-the-morning event prompted by a desperate need
not to wake the neighbours.
Anxious to compare the original unit (then costing around GBP400 without
remote-control capability) with the 'best in test' headphone amp from my
round-up of sub-｣500 contenders (published in Gramophone, June 2000), the HeadMaster was duly installed for a home demo. Here it is easily
proved a match for the little GBP425 tube-powered EarMax Pro - winner of
that June 2000 round-up - ironically having a similarly warm, almost
valve-like presentation with no shortage of detail to be enjoyed.
If there was a niggle it was that the Musical Fidelity A3 CD player used
as a source
could sometimes sound at odds with the Sugden, the pairing producing an overly bloomy bass at times, with poor recordings having a tendency to
sound peaky up top. So when Sugden announced that it was to couple
the HeadMaster with a dedicated CD player and power amp, all with remote
control from a single handset, the call went out to get the whole system
home.
Dubbed the Bijou Series, all components share casework built from both
aluminum and steel plate, finished in a paint the company describes as
being
'black chrome' in colour. Atop each piece is printed in black the legend 'Handcrafted Audio Products', and all units come shipped with a small
cardboard tag tied to the panel bearing the signatures of those engineers
responsible for its final sign-off. It's a small touch, but one which
adds to
the series' air of quality and exclusivity. Build quality is downright
superb (though, surprisingly, the volume and selector knobs on the HeadMaster
feel
a little plasticky in comparison with the case work), and the whole system, at just 30cm tall when stacked, has the look and feel of mini bank vault.
OK, it may cost a couple of pounds under two-and-a-half grand, but it certainly
looks the business.
As for the CD player, this is built around a modified Philips CDM-12 transport feeding a DSC7 18-bit four times oversampling hybrid IC - a little unusual
in these days of 24-bit bitstream designs - but all filtering, noise shaping
and conversation are via circuits of in-house design. To the rear
can be
found a set of analogue outputs to take the signal on to the HeadMaster,
plus a coaxial digital output should you wish to connect a minidisk or
a CD-R
recorder. A nice touch is that the functions of the buttons on the player's fascia are clearly marked by lettering on top of the unit - a sign that the
Sugden has thought about its product from all angles and gone out of its
way to ensure that it earns every penny of its not insubstantial price-tag.
As for the HeadMaster, this sports three line-ins, plus a tape loop, with a single set of preouts, and, of course, a stereo headphone output, switched in
order th]at the speakers mute when headphone listening is activated.
This feeds the 35W-per-channel AmpMaster power amp, the only unit here
to
have its on-off switch on the fascia. (A word of warning: if you
are going to power down the whole unit the turn off the power amp first.
Turn off the
CD player and preamp first and you are asking for a nasty surge into your speakers.) This, in turn, sports a pair of analogue inputs with a set of sturdy
speaker terminals.
Performance
Curious as to how the dedicated CD player would perform I'm afraid it was
out of the box and straight into my reference system, where it replaced
the
Musical Fidelity A3 CD player to feed a Musical Fidelity M3 integrated
amp driving a pair of Dynaudio Audience 52 speakers (which we reviewed
last
month).
At first, the player appears a shade closed-in and lacking in some bite
compared with other machines available around the watershed GBP 1000 mark.
However let the ears relax into what at first sounds a rather rich and warm presentation and you begin to realise that lesser electronics are guilty of
creating false brilliance, and that the CD Master has fine cohesion coupled
with an ability to allow the listener to see into the music that is downright
remarkable at the price.
First there's the treble: thanks to an extra degree of body and shimmer compared with the sub ｣1000 pack, it ensures instruments such as piccolos
and high percussion are conveyed with even greater realism. Then
there's the midrange: its sheer silkiness ensures that solo voices or sharply
executed snare drum rolls are conveyed with all their refinement intact.
Meanwhile, a fully weighted bass means there's certainly no shortage of
extension down-low, yet the fact that it's both fast and rhythmic means the sounds of cellos and timpani are delivered without an ounce of fat. The
result is that there's no overhang to blur individual notes or slow down
the presentation overall.
The superb imaging means the player positions performers in a remarkably deep soundstage, and there is just the right amount of ambient information to
give a highly realistic portrayal of their positions. Even better,
the player can reveal even the finest detail in an individuals performance
- a little vibrato,
here, or a note on a cello struck more forcefully than its predecessor
- ensuring the attention of the listener is held.
Time, then, to consider the Bijou System as a whole. A number of
interconnects were tried, but I finally settled on twin sets of Ecosse
Reference MA2
(GBP150/m) as these allowed the system to show off its even-handed balance, while speakers used alternated between the Dynaudios and a pair of
Harbeth HL-K6s - both of which produced excellent results. Replacing
the big ｣3000 Musical Fidelity integrated with the GBP1200 Sugden pre/power
combo proved not to be as big a wrench as I had feared. True, the
soundstage loses some of its three-dimensionality and instruments lack
a little
space and sheer presence, but then this is a system designed for use in
smaller rooms, where such a presentation could prove a boon. Certainly
at
no time did things seem cluttered or compressed.
Rather, the sound now gels completely, having speed, attack and a sweetness
all of its own. Whether it's a solo piano piece such as Andreas Staier's
recording of Clementi's Capriccio in B flat (Teldec,10/00) or the full orchestra pounding towards the climax of the main theme during Tchaikovsky's
Piano Concerto No 1, the system ensures the music sounds silky, smooth
and wonderfully of a piece. Switch to something simpler recordingwise,
such
as Julian Lloyd Webber's performance of the moderato from Walton's Cello
Concerto (Philips, 8/97), or some close-miked vocal work and the Sugden
also manages to impress, pulling of the trick that marks out all great
hi-fi in being able to disappear, allowing the music to itself to do its
stuff.
Smooth, silky, and capable of tingling the spine, time after time, the Sugden is very special indeed. If your in the market for a compact system that
combines classic looks with a heady dose of high-end sound than get down to your local dealer and give the Bijou a listen today. Otherwise best keep
away: hear just a minute or two of sound of which this marvel is capable and that roomful of huge units and cabling you've been swearing by all these
years may all just start to look a little silly.
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Niche and easy does it for Sugden
Rating * * * * *
For Transparency; dynamics and
subtlety; excellent build and finish
Against Nothing at all
Verdict A great niche product that sounds simply brilliant.
We can't wait to hear the rest of Sugden's Master range
The Headmaster would have been a far more limited device if the engineers
at Sugden had kept a pair of headphones in their lab. The lack of
'phones
forced them to connect the prototype to a power amp to gauge sound quality,
and in doing this they realised that the Headmaster made a fine preamp.
So the headmaster now has three line-level inputs, a preamp output and
a tape loop along with the standard headphone socket. It is now a
more
versatile unit that can be used as a headphone amplifier or basic preamp.
We used a pair of Grado SR125 headphones and a Roksan Caspian power amplifier during the test, and in either role the results are terrific. The
Headmaster performs a superb balancing act, combining transparency, refinement
and dynamics in equal doses. Play a pop disc such as Sugarbabes'
One Touch and it responds with plenty of speed and the sort of slam that
leaves the listener in no doubt about the producer's intentions.
Resoloution is impressive too, with the Sugden providing an open window
into the recording.
Pleasingly, despite all that analysis, this amp never sounds mechanical
or sterile. Orchestral instruments retain a natural character and
fluid dynamics
of the sort that only top-class electronics ever produce. There's a pleasing richness about the lower frequencies that merely serves to preserve the
natural warmth of real voices and instruments. A recording such as
Holst's The Planets is a joy due to the insight and spaciousness offered
by this
amplifier.
Add the kind of casework that brings to mind a bank vault, and a real quality
feel to all the controls, and this headphone preamplifier becomes an
essential audition for all those who value a transparent and natural sound.
Highly recommended.
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Not fixing something that ain't broke smacks of laconic Yorkshire pragmatism.
No surprise, then, that laconic Yorkshire-based hi-fi manufacturer Sugden
has managed to avoid fixing its
classic A21 class A amp for the best part of 30 years. Sure, it's evolved
a little - more power and refinement and slim new boxes being the most
obvious changes - but the basic circuit
design is pretty much the same. It's a good 'un.
And, as ever, it generates the heat of a miniature Aga. All amps that operate in pure class A do this because, in an bid to optimise linearity and minimise distortion, the transistors are run
flat out all the time irrespective of the output power requirement. It
works, too. The downside of such a design is that it's current hungry but
very inefficient at converting what it draws
from the mains into output for driving speakers. The result is wasted energy
dissipated as heat.
That said, the latest A21 is more than twice as powerful as the original,
posting 25 Watts per channel compared with 10. The improvement has been
achieved by giving the power stage a
thorough working over and fitting the latest low resistance/high speed output devices. What it means in practice is that the amp has far bigger real world muscles. Headroom, load
tolerance and bandwidth are all now what would be expected of a modern solid state amp. Desperately inefficient speakers should be avoided, but little else should present problems.
Aesthetics are somewhat racier, too. The casing of the original A21 was
essentially a wooden box - cuddly in a Morris Minor Traveller kind of way.
The new look is hardly avant garde but
the front panels of the A21a and matching CD21 CD player do have the good
fortune of being in a titanium-style finish which is hugely fashionable
right now.
There are four line level inputs and a switchable MM/MC phono stage. Titanium finish notwithstanding, the look of the fascia is rather old fashioned with three large knobs to take care of
source selection, channel balance and volume. Sitting between the source and balance knobs are two plastic buttons for mono and tape monitoring.
The CD player is a development of the earlier Audition series, the main
areas of improvement being the implementation of a more sophisticated zero
feedback class A output stage and a
much modified digital output. The CD21 uses Philips' CDM12.1 short-loader
mechanism, modified in house by Sugden, and an 18-bit, hybrid DAC which
is claimed to serve up a wide
dynamic range and high degree of linearity across the audio spectrum.
Sound Quality
Simple statement. The Sugden A21a/CD21 is the best sounding combination of the group. Not the most muscular, not the most exciting but, by a surprisingly breezy margin, the most
consistently musical and enjoyable. Maybe this isn't news to the people who advocate class A circuitry's sonic superiority. Certainly, it isn't the sort of news Sudgen's rivals want to hear.
Both components are class acts. Together they're even better. The system
sound is characterised by an extraordinary lightness of touch and a lovely
delicate treble, which is almost entirely
free from grain and fatiguing effects. In its lucid, undemonstrative, and
wonderfully easy-breathing delivery, the Sugdens sound more valve-like
than the Coplands. They share a good valve
design's beguiling presentation of detail, too; an outstanding amount of
information is present in the signal but it is integrated and weighted
so well that you're barely aware of it. The music
is allowed to communicate without tripping over the mechanics of reproduction.
The result is a seductive warmth and weight that's impossible to resist.
Complicated tunes are delivered without fluster or muddle, simple ones
with pace and
conviction. In fact, there's not much the Sugden duo can't do.
Conclusions
Oldies, it seems, really can be goodies - at least when it comes to making
sweet music. The Sugden combo draws its strength from a classic amp design.
One which, for sheer musicality, showed a clean pair of heels to every other amp in the group. The CD player's no slouch, either. Together they work
beautifully and look rather smart. A revelation and clear Best Buy.
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