The Moon Harbour uses a high grade Burr Brown PCM 1732 upsampling DAC. This DAC upsamples internally to 96/24 and includes a HDCD filter, allowing this single chip to upsample, perform D to A conversion and automatically recover HDCD data. This high level of integration not only aids reliability, but lowers the generation of EMI/RFI data within the player which can pollute the analogue output stage, increasing distortion and spurious signal generation.

Tube Output Stage
The Moon Harbour has been carefully designed to minimize the amount of spurious EFI/RFI generated within the player, together with controlling stray magnetic flux and vibrational energy which can, in itself, cause distortion through microphony. This has resulted in an analogue output stage requiring far less of the usual heavy filtering used in CD players to remove these various types of distortion from the signal. This gives the Moon Harbour a sound and presentation which is far more accurate to the original musical event. Through the application of high quality components, carefully filtered power supplies and a unique suspension arrangement on the analogue output boards, the resulting board has excellent drive capability, possesses an exceptionally fast and open sound whilst producing a large, highly focused soundstage. Unusually for a CD player at this price point, the Moon Harbour is equipped with not only single ended outputs, but also balanced outputs on high quality XLR connectors, allowing the Moon Harbour to be used in a fully balanced system.

Digital Outputs
When examination of many current digital transports showed that many of these units are CD players with the DAC stage removed to produce a digital transport, then priced at a premium, however the digital transport has already been integrated, therefore the MH-S1 is equipped with a high quality, low jitter S/PDIF coaxial digital output and a TOSLink optical digital output.

Power Supply
One often overlooked area of CD player design is the power supply, yet this is a crucial area as failure to supply sufficient current to the analogue output stage, inadequate isolation between the digital and analogue stages, ineffective filtering of the incoming power and lack of damping of the magnetic fields generated by transformers can all prove seriously detrimental to the performance of a high end CD player.

The PSU design begins with a massive transformer, a transformer which is capable of delivering much more power than asked for, meaning lower levels of stray magnetic fields within the CD player chassis. To further ensure isolation of the transformer from the rest of the players internal electronics, the transformer has a copper shield enveloping the windings, effectively isolating the transformer from it's environment. The power is then rectified and fed to a bank of capacitors which, in turn, feed the individual analogue and digital circuits together with the transport mechanism, each well isolated from each other, ensuring that modulations in one circuit pass the other circuits without distortion.

Transport
To ensure long term supply and consistency, the VAM 1202, a direct replacement for the classic Philips CDM 12.1 and 12.2 transports used in players such as the Primare and Sugden Masterclass players has been used. To further enhance its performance the transport has been mounted onto a slab of copper, 10mm thick and 160mm wide which is then fixed to the base plate of the player. This rectangular slab has also been precisely machined to break up the resonant modes in the material. The resultant mass loaded transport delivers very near state of the art performance in a compact chassis.

Chassis design
One of the key principles of the design is to allow the CD transport to operate free from unwanted resonance and vibrations, a platform which would neither distort or flex, a platform which would provide a rigid base for the analogue and digital circuits together with the digital transport. The decision was taken to use a multi element chassis with extruded 4mm thick aluminum side cheeks, profiled so at to break up resonance which could form in a solid slab of aluminum, with an 8mm thick aluminum front panel, and a base plate made from two sheets of material, aluminum and copper, bonded together to form a multi layer composite. The copper was placed on this base plate to form a highly effective RFI/EMI shield from components which may be located beneath it in an equipment rack. A heavily damped 3mm top plate finishes off the enclosure, making a none resonant enclosure, highly resistant to vibration and resonance's, allowing the electronics to operate at their highest level of performance.

Control
The Moon Harbour can be controlled from the simple transport buttons on the top plate of the CD player, which are inset in a milled enclosure and are designed to illuminate when used giving a visual confirmation of your instruction to the player. The Moon Harbour can also be controlled by an elegant, sculptured wooden remote control. The type of wood selected is strong, yet lightweight, so using the Moon Harbour is almost as enjoyable as listening to it.