Translated from the original Dutch test by Jo Mullers, published in Music Emotion, May 2006
Tentlabs CD player Out of the Blue…
An odd fish this is, a CD player that you have to put together yourself. It's not the first thing that springs to mind when looking to buy a CD player. Fortunately, as we'll see, things work out quite well in practice. Tentlabs supplies fully assembled modules that easily fit together to make a complete player.
For the near future yet more modules are planned such as grid bias circuits and high voltage regulators for tube amplifiers. The product we're looking at today however is a CD player, actually consisting of a well-planned range of modules. Its instant appeal for me is the tube based output stage, complete with tube rectifier. Looking at such a work of art makes me drop every prejudice and assures me that this man knows what he's doing. The player As it was carried into my room on the second floor this product just begged to be connected to my main setup right away, such was the perfection it radiated. Let's take a quick tour around the acrylic base plate. Firstly there's the Philips CDpro drive, always an excellent performer by my book. Ease of reproduction and staging is coupled to a natural presentation. Especially the latter sets this drive apart.
"Nice job" best describes my first impression when Guido Tent carried the player into my listening room, the brains behind the company. I seized the first op-opportunity to ask the big question: why would a talented and well-respected engineer, working with one of the biggest electronics manufacturers in the world, give up a solid job to start his own company In one word: passion. To indicate what kind of business is Tentlabs and what capabilities are in house, here's a short overview of Guido's CV. Guido graduated at Eindhoven University with a thesis on linearity of directly heated triodes. This study was done at de Jong Systems.
He then took up a post at Philips, first working for 5 years at the semiconductor division and the next 5 years developing recordable DVD players and drives. His last contribution there was to the first generation of Blu-Ray recorders. But then, Guido could no longer escape the desire for his very own company: Tentlabs was born. Tentlabs Tentlabs' main focus is the design, manufacturing and sales of modules for retrofitting existing products. Think low jitter clock circuits and discrete voltage regulators. Besides that, the lab in Eindhoven is the place to be to have your

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