The Norwegian company Hegel has introduced a new CD player Hegel Viking. A few years ago, the company had to stop producing its Mohican CD player due to a shortage of the element base. Since then, Hegel says: “We have been working on a replacement that would be even better than the Mohican. It’s hard to improve on a great product, but we did it and we’re proud to present Viking, the best CD player we’ve ever made.”
Hegel Viking is a CD-DA (16bit/44.1kHz) CD player designed from the ground up for optimal performance when playing standard (Redbook) CDs. The new product is optimized for the most accurate reproduction of CDs by optimizing components to provide high-quality sound that matches the original recording.
Hegel Viking does not use upsampling of the digital stream, as, according to the developers, this distorts the signal. The highest sound quality is achieved due to accurate reading of information from the disk by the reference transport and high-quality binding of DAC chips during digital-to-analog conversion.
The drive and DAC are directly controlled by Hegel’s Master Clock, ensuring perfect synchronization between them. Using a very low phase noise quartz crystal and patented SoundEngine technology, Hegel’s Viking Discrete Clock Generator keeps jitter to an absolute minimum. The Viking CD player is equipped with an OLED display specially selected for its low noise level. The analog part in the Viking is designed specifically for this model. It includes both an analog Hegel low-pass filter and Line Driver technology, providing fully balanced signal processing all the way to your amplifier.
The Hegel Viking CD player is equipped with both balanced XLR analog outputs and unbalanced RCA outputs. There is also a digital output on the BNC connector for using the novelty as a digital transport with an external DAC unit. The turntable comes with a Hegel RC8 aluminum remote control that can also control other Hegel components.
The Hegel Viking CD player will only be available in black finish and is expected to be available in September 2023. In Europe, the suggested retail price of the novelty is 4,995 euros. In the UK, the turntable will be available for £4,500. For other countries, the price is 5,000 US dollars.
Hegel Viking CD Player specifications:
- Supported optical discs: 12cm Redbook CDs (CD-DA)
- Frequency response: 0 Hz – 22 kHz
- THD: less than 0.0015%
- Output voltage: 2.5V (RMS)
- Analog line outputs: 1 x XLR, 1 x RCA
- Digital output: 1 x coaxial BNC 75 ohm
- Dimensions (W x H x D): 430 x 99 x 305 mm
- Weight: 7.3 kg