New Black Pearls CD Player Announced

Black Pearls whose integrated amplifier Hifi Pig reviewed last year have announced the introduction of their first CD player, the Virgo.

Virgo is a top loader CD player equipped with a USB audio interface. It features the Philips CD PRO 2 module, two PCM1794A in dual-mono configuration to convert the digital signal to analogue and a CS8421 upsampler to convert the 44.1KHz sampling rate of the audio CD to 96KHz before feeding it to the DAC chips.

Besides the sampling conversion Black Pearls say the upsampler “minimizes the jitter contained in the digital signal, resulting in a more detailed and open sound”.

The dual-mono design is also applied in the power supply section, where separate toroidal windings and voltage stabilizer circuits are used.

The USB audio interface is asynchronous and supports up to 192KHz/24 bits sampling rates.

Virgo will have both RCA and XLR (balanced) outputs.