Inside the Rega Saturn

The new Rega CD players, the Apollo and Saturn, have generated allot of buzz on the net and lots of interest by customers. We are not surprised though because both are really fine sounding CD players as reviewers and customers are coming to find out! One of the heat things about the new players is the unique proprietary transport system. My curiosity got the better of me so I decided to pop the top of our new demo Saturn player and take a look inside...

The new Rega transport mechanism features the simple three spring loaded bearing/tabs to secure a CD while in the transport. This eliminates the need for a clamping/puck/chuck system to secure the disc while spinning. The laser assembly is gear driven in this transport design...

Removing the front and rear panels, then the top cover, exposes the inside of the Saturn. A good sized torroidal power supply transformer can seen in the picture. The board is well laid out with the digital (transport control) section around the center of the board and analogue section along the right side...

The transport mechanism itself is a simple design as much of the transports supporting control and drive circuitry is on the main PC board...

On the right side of the main circuit board, the D/A portion of the player can be seen. The Saturn uses a dual differential topology hence the pair of DAC chips. In the background the large chips are heart of the control along with the large memory buffer that the transport system utilizes to precisely clock out data to the DACs...

In this shot you can see part of the additional power supply filtering and regulation used for the D/A portion of the player. The caps may appear small, but they are high quality 1,000uf and 470uf electrolytic units...

All in all, the Saturn is a very well built and very good sounding player. For its $2,400 retail price you do get a player that is significant step up in sound from the $1,000 retail Apollo and a player that is VERY competitive with other CD players at it's price point and higher.

PLEASE NOTE
We do not recommend opening your Rega CD Player. There are ESD (Electro-
Static-Discharge) sensitive parts contained within the player which can be damaged if
not properly handled. Please leave the opening and servicing of your Rega CD player
to qualified personnel.