Classé SSP-50 review - LONG

[Colin Dunn]

I just got a used Classé SSP-50 for my home theater as an upgrade from a Yamaha 3090 as a preamp/processor. After setting up and playing around for a day, here are my thoughts...

Sound quality: Excellent
Ease of setup/use: Fair
Flexibility: Fair
Freedom from glitches: Poor
Overall: Good

Other equipment used in this review: Sunfire Cinema Grand power amp, Pioneer DVL-700 DVD/LD combi-player, Magnepan 1.6 fronts, Magnepan MGCC1 center, Magnepan MMG rears, Velodyne FSR-15 subwoofer, nView D455Z DLP projector (800x600 resolution).

---

First, the sound. I got the SSP-50 because I wasn't satisfied with the sound quality of the Yamaha 3090 as a processor. The speakers I'm using (Magnepan) are ruthlessly revealing of any flaws in the sound quality of electronics. With the Yamaha, the tonal balance was bright, the bass was weak, and midrange wasn't very robust. It sounded like a stereo and not like live music.

Fortunately, the SSP-50 delivered the goods for sound quality. Highs became smoother and open. The midrange got stronger and more robust. Bass got stronger and tighter - but not overpowering.

This component has a warm tonal balance, so it is a good complement to the bright and revealing Magneplanars. If you're running B&W speakers or using Bryston amplification, you may find the sound too polite.

With my associated equipment, it's hard to quibble with the sound quality. I was able to listen for an entire day with no fatigue, yet there was no sign of dullness in percussion or movie sound F/X.

---

Ease of setup leaves some things to be desired. The manual that came with the unit appeared to be incomplete. Diagrams were missing; in their place was "placeholder" text indicating where they should be. Limitations of the processor (see later in this article) were not discussed in the manual, so I had to change the way I connected my subwoofer.

The initial setup is done with on-screen menus. For some reason, my DLP projector could not sync up with these menus, so I had to drag out an old 19" TV to configure the unit. Once I was able to see the menus, they were logically divided and easy enough to navigate. These setup menus can only be accessed through the remote control; the front panel does not have the keys needed to configure the processor.

Once configured, I noticed a few inconveniences when using the SSP-50. You can't directly jump to a specific source; you have to cycle through a list. This means the processor won't lend itself well to home automation, as there's no way to guarantee you'll land on a specific source by programming macros into a universal remote.

There are also irritating delays when switching sources. If you wait more than half a second between button presses, you will be forced to wait about 5 seconds before you can jump to another source. Before I figured this out, I thought the buttons on the front panel were defective.

---

Flexibility of configuration, unfortunately, was a step down from the Yamaha 3090.

The most glaring limitation: THERE IS NO OUTPUT TO THE SUB IN STEREO AUDIO MODE! A high-end audio assumption -- that you wouldn't want a sub muddying up your bass in stereo music -- is hard-coded into the unit. The fronts are always run full-range in stereo mode. To get my sub working for both music and movies, I had to tell the unit I had no sub, then connect the sub between the processor and power amp. That got the bass pumping for music and movies, but forced me to put the sub close to the processor.

The inputs are also less flexible than on the 3090.

There are 4 S-video inputs, on jacks AV1-AV4.

There is one Toslink input, on jack AV5. But jack AV5 doesn't allow S-video input, so you're SOL if you want to switch high-quality video and use Toslink.

All the other digital inputs are coax. More high-end audio dogma enforced - the assumption that coax inherently "sounds better" than Toslink. (I've never heard this with my ears...)

Compare that to the 3090, which gives you coax, S-video, composite video, and Toslink on almost every input.

It took a lot of rewiring my system to adjust to Classé's dogmatic view of how a high-end home theater "should" be set up. Their engineers should get off their high horse and provide us with flexibility instead of making judgments about how we should set up our theaters. What if you don't have coax on all your digital sources? What if you want your sub on to extend your bass on stereo music sources?

---

Now the real problem with the SSP-50: glitches. There were quirks, bugs, idiosyncracies, and limitations that just shouldn't exist in such an expensive piece of equipment. Here's what I've seen so far:

- The digital decoder can't deal with 32KHz/12-bit DAT signals.
- The rear channels don't always turn on when they should. It seems to work if I turn on DD5.1 on my DVD first, then select DD5.1 decoding on the SSP-50. If I get that order wrong, the rears aren't playing.
- Occasionally, when doing a sound-level calibration, a channel will play the test tone for a quarter of a second, then go away. You have to reselect the channel to get the test tone to keep playing. This may be related to the "no rears" problem, as I only had it happen with the rear-left and rear-right channels.
- When skipping around a disc, the SSP-50 will lose its lock to the digital signal and resynchronize. That can mean a drop-out in the audio until it relocks onto the signal. I didn't observe this when playing a movie straight through, but did encounter it when skipping tracks on audio CDs.
- There is no AC-3 RF modulator for laserdisc Dolby Digital. It should have been included, especially at the price it sells for new.
- Macrovision confuses the internal video switching in this unit. Not good for a high-end processor that is targeted at installations with 80"+ front-projectors. I had to rerun my video cables directly to the projector to work around this glitch.
- Surround format autodetection didn't work reliably. I had to turn it off and select the surround-sound format manually.

All these problems were with firmware version 1.43. I will be contacting Classé to find out if there are upgrades that fix these bugs, and to find out if my problems with the rear channels mean this unit needs to be serviced.

---

To sum up: If you want no-compromise sound quality and can live with the bugs and limitations, this processor will deliver what you want.

If, however, the bugs, input source limitations, and glitches would pose a problem in your setup, you should probably look elsewhere for your surround processor. I'm going to hang onto mine because it brings out the best in the Magneplanars. Hopefully, there will be a fix for the bugs. More later...



------------------
Colin Dunn
DDS-006