We've seen plenty of CD players with valves, but we haven't seen any that look as though they're giving a valve amp a piggyback. Icon Audio makes a large range of glass-powered amplifiers. It has also been responsible for a number of CD players in the past, but none that were this hardcore. And that's why the output stage on the CDX1 has its own hard-wired chassis and valve power supply. In fact, the CDX1's designer David Shaw wanted to make a proper output stage, rather than the usual addition of small triodes to a regular transistor circuit.



Link: TechRadar