English

With sophisticated styling and good looks to boot, this wonderful combo of separate transport and DAC from Italy at no time failed to please. In fact, my initial and long-lasting opinion was that they had a deliciously, seductive sound, full of character and musically true.
I enjoyed many hours of extended listening to music with strong bass quality, open and detailed midrange along with extended highs.
Overall dynamics were powerful with the sound coming to you in a convincingly forceful manner. But the sound also had the ability to go soft and delicate when appropriate.

The North Star offers solid price-to-performance ratio, and is at all times quite musically pleasing and something seriously worth considering.

italiano

La qualità che subito emerge anche da una semplice occhiata alle misure effetuate sul player North Satr è l'altissimo grado di linearità, unito ad un rumore tanto basso da essere trascurabile rispetto a quello di quantizzazione proprio dei 16 bit del formato CD.

... il Sapphire mostra quelle peculiarità progettuali e realizzative che sono appannaggio degli oggetti di qualità frutto della passione e dell'abilità umane

L'ascolto
Asciutto, pulito, rigoroso. Il che, tradotto nella nostra lingua di popolo che si emoziona con le note identifica, molto semplicemente, un oggetto degno di considerazione.
I tre aggettivi di cui sopra tentano un'approssimazione di quanto difficilmente definibile nel senso che l'insieme delle sensazioni suscitate dall'ascolto di lettori della classe del Sapphire può essere compiutamente delineato soltanto evidenziandone la sostanziale aderenza alla musica dal vivo.

Nederlands

Conclusie
Met de gloednieuwe Sapphire weet North Star Design een lang gekoesterde ambitieuze droom waar te maken. Hun eerste d-speler is namelijk meteen van wereldklasse en bijzonder geslaagd. Zowel wat betreft vormgeving, afwerking als gehoormatig is het een zeer overtuigend product zonder hiaten en zwakke plekken.
Opmerkelijk is dat de inwendige opbouw echt gebalanceerd is waardoor het maximale rendement uit deze wijze van (gebalanceerd) aansluiten kan worden gehaald.
De kwaliteiten van deze fraai vormgegeven Benjamin zijn ook bij toevallige en minder toevallige luisteraars niet onopgemerkt gebleven en zelden zag ik zoveel enthousiasme voor een cd-speler die hier logeert.
Het aankoopbedrag van € 2.100,-is absoluut gezien nog steeds voor de meeste onder ons een flinke uitgave maar voor dit bedrag koopt u wel een dijk van een cd-speler, eentje die de gerenommeerde producten uit de werkelijke topklasse (veel) dichter weet te benaderen dan menigeen ook maar ooit zou kunnen vermoeden.
Zeer aanbevolen.

Lees de hele recensie hier  

English

Almost tube-like

The North Star Design Phonostage offered a rich, quiet, fullsounding, nonmechanical sound, with good macrodynamics and excellent microdynamics.

English

The really good news is that the North Star units enabled me to enjoy the music and basically forget about reviewing them. In fact, before I knew it - the CD had played all the way through and I had simply listened about as intently as I could have imagined.

Loaded with a variety of musical subtleties and nuances galore, the North Star combo performed quite well and provided very good grunt and growl, mixed in with obvious delicate sounds, when called for on this recording. The pair also provided a realistically punchy mid bass that had excellent pitch, articulation and definition. All in all, listening to this recording through the North Star units was simply fun to do.

What the North Star units do in the area of soundstaging is quite good, if not outstanding...

At this point, it was becoming hard to simply sit down to analyze the North Star units and nit-pick their performance. What I had realized over the time I had them in-house was how musical they were and it was easy for me to simply come downstairs – pop open a CD, drop it in the CD tray, hit play and just start listening. The North Star digital gear almost made me not want to do the important reviewing and spend my time listening.

I can easily recommend this pair of Italian beauties to anyone considering purchasing digital playback gear. Job very well done.