Rega Jupiter

Bigger brother to the Planet

By Brent Burmester

March 2003

Rega Jupiter CD player. $3100

I’d like to dedicate this review to whoever designed the box in which the Rega Jupiter is delivered. Essentially a thick cardboard suitcase, complete with handle and hinged lid, it made carrying, unpacking, and repacking the Jupiter a rare pleasure. Cunningly, when the box is opened, you are confronted by the Jupiter’s top-loading CD transport mechanism. As you see in the picture, it’s something of a distinguishing feature.

Lifting the Jupiter out, you become aware of its solid, if not fall-out shelter construction, the heat sinks arrayed on the underside, and it’s strangely fascinating spongy feet. The black (or alloy-finish) casing, with its subtle curves says “I Am The Business” as opposed to “All shall worship me and despair”, but it doesn’t draw attention away from the listening experience – no, that role is left to the blood red LED display panel. If there is a reason for this colour choice, I don’t want to know it. A non-calendar style display might have rendered the fiendish glow less disturbing, yet it would still remind me of the Texas Instruments calculator I used in the early 80s.

Starship Enterprise

But you want to hear about the disc loading mechanism. Yes, a top-loader is a rare and special commodity these days, and the Jupiter’s little Starship Enterprise (The Next Generation), is quite a novelty, shared with baby brother the Planet. It is a bit plastic, but it opens and shuts like a clam and, unless heavily leaned on laterally, should be up to years of use. It’s pretty neat for the first few disc changes, but you get over it. Maybe I’m a hard man to impress: my first CD player, a little Toshiba bought in 1987, was also a top loader. It still works!

When a player shows this level of attention to styling at a mid-level price point, there must be a suspicion that all cannot be well under the skin. That is certainly not the case here. The Jupiter features a hefty toroidal transformer and fastidious power regulation, its transport is a sturdy Sony-sourced unit, and the DACs are proprietary devices, which clearly demonstrate Rega’s rapid mastery of digitalia. Rega doesn’t go in for fashionable op-amps and capacitors, but the circuitry is undoubtedly of a high standard. I’d guess that the output voltage is a mite higher than the standard 2V, so take care in comparative auditions that the Rega’s loudness doesn’t lead you astray.

This Jupiter's a revision of the one that’s been around for a couple of years – the lid has been revised and there are several internal changes.

That may not sound like a rave...

What this all adds up to is a listening experience best summed up as ‘pleasing’. That may not sound like a rave, but the Jupiter is not a budget player and it should deliver the sonic goods, which it does with aplomb. It scores highly on all the usual performance criteria: the sound-stage blooms and envelops during climactic moments, detail retrieval is high, instruments and voices occupy their own distinct spaces, previously unnoticed musical ingredients rise out of the mix, etc etc.

The Jupiter is very sound, with a ‘rightness’ about it that demands continual programme input. To reach for a simile from the world of amplification, the Jupiter possesses an almost Class A quality: warm, highly resolved, tangible. If not landing you directly in high-end territory, it lifts you high enough to see over the fence, to where the beautiful people sip exotic cocktails while undergoing cosmetic surgery by the pool.

Unlike a lot of kit, which shines when reproducing small-scale acoustic material, Rega’s Jupiter thrives on Big Music. Feed it orchestras working up a lather, stadium rock, choirs in full flight, and you’ll enjoy a sense of scale that won’t be found for less cash in the digital domain. Don’t misunderstand me – the Jupiter is not the Cerwin Vega! of CD players by any means: it handles a wide range of genres in a very accomplished fashion, from Joni Mitchell and a guitar to Zakhir Hussein and an upended pot. And, for some reason, this player does marvelous things with brass instruments.

Foibles? Well, at a stretch one might hold out for a bit more assertion on percussive transients. The Jupiter also very occasionally failed to deliver the hairs-on-the-back-of-the-neck thing, when I knew I’d had it via other players, but then it more often created those moments where they hadn’t existed before. Anything else? Not really.

All up a well made, fine sounding machine, with aesthetic appeal and almost no limits to its compatibility with amps and speakers. Recommended, then? Definitely.

For your nearest Rega dealer