MBL NOBLE SERIES N31 CD PLAYER–D/A PROCESSOR

In Stereophile’s February 2018 issue,1 I reviewed the MBL Noble Line N31, a baroque-styled CD player and D/A processor from German manufacturer MBL.2

- John Atkinson

The N31 is expensive, at $15,400, but, as I said in my review’s conclusion, digital audio engineering doesn’t get any better and neither does digital sound quality. However, I also wrote that the N31’s absence of a volume control might be a problem for those who’ve sold their preamplifiers, as will be the lack of a network port for those who’ve banished their noisy NAS drives from the listening room. (The N31 does have a USB port—two, actually—which I used with Roon running on a Mac mini.) I also wished that the MBL’s reconstruction filter—the N31 offers a choice of three: Fast and Slow linear-phase filters and a minimum-phase filter— could be selected with the remote control.

At the start of 2020, MBL North America’s Jeremy Bryan let me know that an update for the N31 was available that would address these practical concerns. The N31 can now have a Roon Ready Input Module installed, either in production, which increases the price to $16,420, or retrofitted to existing N31s for $1062 plus the cost of field installation by a qualified technician.3 Bryan warned that some of the oldest N31s, including my review sample (serial number 0034), would have to be returned to the factory for the upgrade.