Spectral Audio President Richard Fryer (above) brought the new SDR-4000SV Studio Reference CD Processor ($20,000) to Innovative Audio Video Showrooms in Manhattan May 13 and 14, as part of the New York City dealer's "Meet the Innovators" series. Fryer debuted Spectral's limited-edition digital player and playback system in one of Innovative's renovated listening rooms, its dark lights, cool temps and flowing white wine aiding the already sumptuous atmosphere.

As well as the SDR-4000SV Studio Reference CD Processor, the Spectral Audio system included Spectral's DMA-400 Monaural Reference Standard monoblocks ($30,000/pair, above), and Spectral DMC-30SV Reference Preamplifier ($14,000, below). Innovative's Wilson Audio Alexandria XLF Loudspeakers ($200,000/pair) provided the soundstage.

Why a CD player, you may wonder, in the age of Tidal, Pono, and the "Cloud"?

"Just as vinyl and turntables are supposed to be antique and obsolete, we know they are not," Fryer explained during his two-hour presentation. "If you know what is considered obsolete in digitalwhich is the compact discyou have the option to rip it or download it. But I submit that this is the ultimate form in how you play a 44.1 recording. If you want to hear the best possible performance from a musical medium you go to its native format and [for digital] recordings that is compact disc and 44.1. We can show you why playing [compact discs] in a physical player and the physical medium will outperform any file or download."

You can't discuss Spectral Audio without mentioning record company, Reference Recordings. Co-founded by Silicon Valley wiz Keith O. Johnson with J. Tamblyn Henderson, Reference Recordings has produced 100-plus recordings that include three Grammy award-winners and eight Grammy nominations. Serving as Reference Recordings' technical director, recording engineer and partner, Johnson's 50 years in the audio industry led to his development (with engineer Michael Pflaumer) of the High Definition Compatible Digital (HDCD) encoding process that was eventually sold to Microsoft.

"When Keith Johnson was a scrawny graduate from Stanford University, he was hired by Fairchild to build large-scale bipolar transistors," Fryer noted. "He's one of the fathers of the transistor in the Silicon Valley. No one knows more about these devices, transistors, than this very quiet man. And he's a music lover. His original goal was to be a recording engineer, which was secured when Reference Recordings was founded 40 years ago. Spectral and Reference are brother and sister companies; we believe we can guide listeners to a higher level of authenticity in high fidelity. We know how recordings are made; we make them the old fashioned way, using the finest recording techniques in the finest halls using the finest performances."

The "SV" in Spectral's component branding alludes to the Italian "Super Veloce," also used by Italian car manufacturer Lamborghini, to indicate "high speed." Music pouring from the Spectral Audio/Wilson system was full-speed ahead and then some! Playing Reference Recordings' Wine Dark Sea by Jerry Junkin and The University of Texas Wind Ensemble, the Spectral Audio sound was big, bold, and dynamic, casting sparkling colors that filled the listening space. Orchestral music was a thunderous treat through this mega-system (though it felt less adept at portraying intimate small scale blues). Listening to Spectral Audio's wares via Innovative Audio's purpose-built room, the divide between digital and audio became inconsequential. Great music has a way of doing that.

"There is much more information decoded into the compact disc than anyone would know," Fryer said. "It's hiding. Inherent in CDs is so much more, which can be revealed by very careful, precision processes and that's what we've brought to bear with the SDR-4000SV (below). This is a precision instrument bringing state of the art technology that didn't exist in the heyday of the compact disc. This is new technology in its conversion, its operation and its playing of the physical disc, in its clocking and its analog section.

"Spectral is the only example of a CD player with no integrated circuit (IC) anywhere in the analog signal path," Fryer continued. "Some other products have some discrete circuits, but they use op-amps. It's so hard to make a digital playback instrument without an IC in the signal path that no one else has done it. But Keith Johnson, one of the fathers of the transistor, said 'we need to replace op-amps, everywhere.' First, after the DAC, in that interface is where much music is lost. Switching distortions are ubiquitous in digital. We use discrete circuits that are pure class-A to replace op-amps. They never turn off. We make a push-pull fully balanced circuit that is the ideal thing to place after the converter. What comes from that is a very pure, very unbroken, clean, brilliant sound. A sound that doesn't sound like digital anymore. It sounds the way records always have."