Moon Audio is one of those less well-known brands that quietly goes about the business of making top-notch audio electronics at its base in Boucherville, Quebec.

The CD 5.3 RS player and i5.3 RS integrated amplifier featured here form part of Moon's Classic series range - a group of products that also includes two further CD players that are more affordable and a similar helping of integrated amps.

Both components also carry the RS suffix, which means they've been revised from their North American specification, to comply with European RoHS (Restriction of the use of certain Hazardous Substances) regulations.

Behind the name

This influential directive bans the sale of new electronic products on the EU market with more than the agreed levels of lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants.

The electronics in both the CD player and the amp are fundamentally different than the standard versions. Due to the RS regulations, both products include higher temperature grade PCBs, with gold-plated rather than tin/lead composite traces and have extensive use of improved dielectric (insulating) material.

Health and safety concerns aside, Moon is also the sort of company that opts for a stable and considered approach, which is reflected in the no-nonsense engineering of its products. And when it comes to amplifier design, it uses DC coupling (where capacitors are completely removed from the signal path in order to produce a better soundstage).

Moon also uses power supply transformers with 'tight regulation' on the premise that such devices allow the amp to drive difficult loudspeaker loads more effectively than 'typical' transformers which Moon claims deliver ten per cent less voltage.

The i5.3 RS has a specification to deliver 85 watts, which doesn't seem a great deal for the price, but when combined with a high damping factor and low output impedance, it results in surprising amounts of grip.

As ever with power figures, quality is more important than quantity and this is apparent when you try to drive tougher speaker loads at higher levels.

System features

On the features front, the i5.3 RS has five line-level inputs, one of which is configured to operate as a unity gain input - very useful if you want to combine stereo and multichannel systems in one room.