Digital at Its Best: Hegel Viking CD Player
The Viking CD Player exemplifies Hegel’s philosophy on sound and design. It’s all about being natural. Or in this case, all about what a CD player is naturally meant to do—take the music from a CD and transport it to your ears in the best way possible and nothing more. There are no additional built-in functions like streaming or pre amp capabilities. And therefore the Viking is able to do that one thing, play the music, extremely well—naturally you could say.
In this video, ListenUp sits down with Anders Ertzeid from Hegel to talk about the Viking and Hegel’s Philosophy on source components in general. He talks about what makes Viking unique from the Master Clock to the AKM4493SEQ DAC and how Hegel was inspired to build a CD player in this age of streaming because it was the one way to completely control a digital signal from back to front. In short, because there is no streaming service serving up the music you have complete control. Complete control to perfect it and make it the best, most pristine digital music available.
In addition, Anders discusses Hegel’s philosophy on aesthetics and why all Hegel products are deliberately stripped down and simple looking—the epitome of Scandinavian design. Something, at least with HiFi products, that has taken some getting used to in other parts of the world where the trend has been lights and meters and dials—all sorts of audio bling.
We found ourselves beyond intrigued by Hegel’s approach to audio. The simple, natural approach to reproducing the music is pretty refreshing in our opinion. Especially in this age of hyper complexity. We were left feeling enlightened. We hope you will be too.
Hegel Viking Specifications:
Supported Discs: 12 cm Redbook CDs
Line Level Output:
- 1 unbalanced fixed (RCA)
- 1 balanced fixed (XLR)
Output Voltage Analog: 2.5V RMS
Digital Output: 1 BNC true 75 Ohm
Frequency Response: 0Hz-22 kHz
Distortion: Less than 0.0015%
Finish: Black
Dimensions/Weight:
- Metric: 9.9 cm x 43 cm x 30.5 cm (HxWxD), 7.3 kg
- US: 3.54" x 17" x 12" (HxWxD), 16.1 lbs
