Vincent's product development and engineering is done in Iffezheim, Germany and the manufacture in China. This is a business model that has only recently gained a foothold in the aspirational market.
Vincent is now distributed by Essex-based speaker maker Ruark. Apparently, Ruark boss Alan O'Rourke was looking for electronics to go with the company's speakers and found Vincent to be just the ticket. Ruark just imports the Design Line Three components from Vincent's large portfolio of products, which includes AV components, loudspeakers and some heavy-duty amplification.
The range coming into the Australia consists of two variations on the CD-S6 CD player theme: the one tested here with balanced outputs and another that's $350 less expensive with only single-ended outputs. There is also a preamp, stereo and monoblock power amps, a headphone amp and an FM/AM RDS tuner. All the components use a hybrid of valve and solid state components – even the tuner.
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But nothing in the range is more expensive than the CD-S6 MkII player, a machine that incorporates plenty of hardcore technology for the price. The DAC is a Burr-Brown 24/96 type, although the exact model isn't specified, while the filter is from Pacific Microsonics and thus includes HDCD decoding. The player also contains a
Philips VAM 1202 transport – a dedicated audio drive for a change.
A 12AU7 valve is on display through the circular window in the front panel and may be illuminated with varying degrees of bling via a switch at the back. But it's not alone – there are three more 12AX7 tubes hidden away that complete the analogue output stage. Elsewhere, there is a beefy mains transformer and shielded compartments for the input relays and remote control circuitry to minimise the effect of stray radiation from these components. The chassis itself is damped to minimise vibration and this combined with the power supply builds the player up to a decent nine-kilo fighting weight.
You can see from the front panel that the CD-S6 has the unusual addition of a volume controlled headphone output – which is still quite uncommon on even an ambitious CD player. This makes a convenient change if you want to play loud without risking sonic leakage (soon to be outlawed by another EU diktat).
Among the shiny buttons on the front, there's a blue light dubbed ‘warm up'. This flicks on and off when actually warming up, for about 20 seconds, and then stays on when warm. To be picky, it should really be labeled ‘warmed up', or ‘hot to trot' or something similar. Twenty seconds seems pretty quick for a warm up, but that's where tubes have the edge over transistors, which take closer to twenty minutes to come on song thermally – but you wouldn't want to watch a blinking light for that long.
