MBL Corona C31 CD Player Review

Design and Intentions

The C31 has a special front-loading slot drive specifically intended for CD, CDR, and CD-RW. In the original issue, the laser head (red laser) was sourced from Sony, the drive mechanism from Sanyo, and the CD decoder and servo (control unit) from Philips. It seems I was far from the only C31 user who discovered, sooner or later – in my case, within a few months – that the player began skipping, clicking, and sometimes refusing to play discs altogether. Jürgen Reis, with whom all of MBL’s designs originate, assures me that the Sony laser head has since been replaced with a far more reliable laser head from Sanyo. This must be what I received in my replacement review unit, because it performed flawlessly over the many months I listened to it.

In a 45-minute Skype interview with Reis, 52, I learned that he has been with MBL for 30 years. Reis became head of MBL’s Development Department two years after he joined the company, and was the person who realized the design for an omni-directional loudspeaker.

Each of MBL’s three current lines – Corona, Noble, and Reference – was designed, in Reis’s words, to have “a family sound that is balanced and homogenous,” and unique to that line.

“To me, a balanced sound was the most important thing,” Reis said. “The Corona line is a bit more accurate and focused, and the Noble line is a bit more laid back and musical. The differences are, to some customers, small, but it’s very important to me to recognize this specific sonic difference and the parts that are creating it.

“The Corona line is also aimed at younger people who aren’t necessarily hard-core audiophiles who change cables and speakers every week. I visit our customers in various countries and spend time with them, so I have a sense of how different types of customers prefer to listen. Specifically, I’ve made a correlation between how the living room looks and how they prefer their system to sound. As a result, the Corona line sounds a bit cleaner than the Noble line, without in any way being sterile. It has a finer high range without any fatiguing, and a midrange that is very fluid but does not bloom too much or sound too sterile. The bass response goes very low, but is neither dry nor boomy.”

Asked for further clarification, Reis said that the Noble line has the more romantic sound of the two. MBL’s Reference line, in turn, attempts to create a big soundstage with high emotional impact.

“I’ve recognized that at some point, if you hear too many details, you can lose track of the main part of the music,” he said. “So it’s a balancing act to get the parts into the signal path that give you the highest musical factor and enjoyment. If you listen to the Reference System, you really forget the time you spend listening; you just sit down and listen to one record after another.”

96 is the Limit… Kind of

The unit’s multi-bit Delta Sigma DAC section achieves 24-bit resolution. Note, however, that all MBL CD players and DACs play back files only up to a 96kHz sampling rate. When I questioned Reis about this apparent limitation, he explained that seven or eight years ago, when MBL developed a DAC that could play both 192 kHz PCM and DSD files, he wasn’t happy with the sound. After using the best measurement equipment available, from Audio Precision, he discovered that 192kHz does not measure as well as 96kHz.

“The higher the sampling rate gets, the more sensitive the unit is to timing and jitter errors,” he declared. “From my standpoint, it’s better to have low jitter, which is easier to achieve with a 96k system…