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.

Essentially, it means that the integrated turns into a power amplifier for this input and the volume control is taken out of the circuit. One unusual touch is the way that the balance operates, reducing the level of one channel while leaving the other constant, or vice-versa.

The remote control is pleasant enough and apart from a minor fault with it (we couldn't decrease the volume), its only shortcoming is the lack of direct 'track entry' keys. While it has a sleek and streamlined, uncluttered look, the lack of track selection capability is mildy disappointing.

The CD5.3 RS CD player inhabits a very similar heatsink-flanked case to the partnering amplifier, but it has a bump on the top to make space for the disc drive. The four legs have threaded sockets into which you screw the small pointy feet that discourages one from stacking the player atop an amp.

Tough build

Construction is solid rather than slick (the front panel is very professional-looking), but the top plate looks a little tinny for the money. The rear end is embellished with decent WBT socketry and thus looks and feels the biz.

Under the lid the CD player has a Philips- based transport mechanism driven by Moon's own control software. On the power supply side, there are two mains transformers - one of which supplies the analogue output stage, while the other drives the digital side and the disc drive system.

The power supply has eight stages of voltage regulation prior to supplying elements like the DAC (which is a Burr-Brown 1730E). While this is not a chipset we've seen in many other players, it is a 24-bit/192KHz converter with 8x oversampling.

As with the amplifier, the CD5.3 RS has a DC servo circuit and proprietary analogue filters. Digital and analogue circuits share the same board, but have their own ground planes, the idea being to minimise circuit length by sharing a board and to minimise interference by not sharing a ground.

Our previous experience with Moon

The last time we listened to a Moon from the Classic series, it was the precursor to this amplifier and was simply called i5.

At the time, we found the sound overly smooth, while using very similar cables to those still in our reference system (Townshend and Living Voice) and changing them did the trick.