High-end audio is often much like a game of poker, the most obscure hand wins. I'll see your Blue Circle AG3000 dual mono pre-amp and raise you a GLIM M-8 three-box single-ended triode mono power amp. But when it comes to CD players, the great audio poker game suddenly goes all conservative. Accuphase, Krell, Linn, Wadia, Naim, Mark Levinson... the same names have remained at the top of the high-end tree for a decade, with nary a challenger to up the ante. Fortunately, the Combak Reimyo CDP-777 represents the Royal Flush of CD players – almost no-one's seen one, it costs a cool £9,500 and it sounds bloody marvellous. So it should: the word “Reimyo” is Japanese for miracle.
The Combak Corporation of Japan is best known for producing remarkable bits of high-end tweakery: It's the company behind Harmonix, those tuning feet and wall dots that change the sound of your system by releasing a stream of metrionic particles in the quantum foam and reversing the polarity of the neutron flow - or something. The company also makes a range of very well-respected cables, mains conditioners, 300B-based single-ended triode power amps and even a pair of mini-monitors called Bravo, but most of the electronics stay firmly ensconced in the Pacific Rim. Only the CD player and an older, cheaper DAP-777 digital converter are readily available in Blighty.
At the heart of the CD player beats an Extended K2 processor from JVC, the same beast used to produce the XRCD-2 discs. This 20-bit DAC effectively ‘guesses’ the

beyond-20kHz frequency response of a PCM-based data-stream and fills in the blanks, in a manner not dissimilar to the systems used so effectively by Pioneer and Wadia. Once upon a time, such technology was available to mere mortals on JVC's own CD players (it still exists on JVC's top DVD Audio/Video players, but these models lack the battleship build of the best JVC players or the Combak, and the sound suffers accordingly). Right from the outset, K2 was considered to be full of high-end potential as a processing standard, albeit one that – thanks to the comparatively cheap JVC players sold in the UK – never quite achieved its potential. The Reimyo liberates the K2 from the strictures of price and shows just what it is capable of. The K2 system used by the Reimyo CDP-777 is the most recent Version 2.0 system, which was never seen on JVC CD players in the UK, so it represents a unique slice of what the best of the technology can do. Effectively, it's a 176.4kHz 24bit player with four times over-sampling, so theoretically this means a data rate in excess of 700kHz. The analogue frequency range is suggested to hit its end-stops around 88kHz, so sonically it has more in common with a SACD player than a vanilla CD player in terms of frequency response. It also features a JVC based top-loading magnetic puck transport mechanism and a manually operated smoked glass sliding door that only allows the disc to play when fully shut. Somehow, this glass manages to feel like it's damped and slides perfectly. Double-glazed French window fitters

take note – it can be done! Essentially, the internal organs are those of JVC's never-hit-these-shores, top of the line XL-Z900 CD player, but don't make the mistake of thinking this is just a JVC player in a different case. The PCBs inside the CDP-777 may use JVC components but the circuits themselves are entirely Combak-created. Naturally, of course, it is also packed with those resonance tuning devices that made the Harmonix name.
One word about build quality – magnificent. We rarely see this sort of Japanese fit and finish in the West. But remember, Japan is the home of Shindo Labs and Japanese audiophiles are well known in the industry for demanding the sort of standards that would make Swiss watchmakers blanch. The end product has been designed and assembled by precision measuring instrument manufacturer Kyodo Denshi. On the basis of the CDP-777 alone, Kyodo Denshi must rank up there with Rolex, SME and Bentley.
The CDP-777 is simplicity itself in layout, with those over-large buttons, a big display and quite a gap between sockets on the back panel. Add in even bigger green LEDs, (you can turn off the display, but not the green LEDs, from the remote) and this at first looks rather like it was designed for those with restricted hand movement and limited vision. But it is actually a relief after attempting to fiddle around with pissy little plastic buttons to come across a product that's built to last longer than I will. The RCA/phono analogue audio sockets are reassuringly well made WBT style >