Onkyo has unveiled a new member of its Icon audio components series – the Icon C-30.
In typical Onkyo fashion, the focus is on sound quality rather than a huge feature list, although it also looks the part as a sleek, stealthy CD player.
Earlier this year, Onkyo returned to the Hi-Fi business in impressive style with its Icon series of seperates. This included a pre-amp, a power amp and a streaming amp. Now there's a fourth component, and this one's a CD player.
In a world of compressed music being streamed online, it's refreshing to see a new player for uncompressed audio.
As we've come to expect from Onkyo, the Icon C-30 isn't packed with bells and whistles, and it isn't trying to be a do-everything player neither. It doesn't play SACD, it doesn't have DSD or MQA decoding, and you can't use its DAC with anything other than its CD drive.
Instead, the spinner is focused on the essentials and priced affordably. Where the other icon products have four-figure price tags, the C-30 is much less expensive.
Onkyo Icon C-30: key features and pricing
The Icon C-30 comes with Onkyo's Vector Linear Shaping Circuitry, VLSC for short, which is designed to eliminate digital pulse noise, and it has a 24-bit/192kHz DAC. Onkyo says that it produces clean, distortion-free output with a low signal to noise ratio (107dB). The C-30 also has a high-precision clock for accurate imaging and timing.
Onkyo has kept the outside straightforward. Round the back there are the obligatory RCA connectors, plus optical and co-axial outputs. The front sports tactile transport controls, a small LCD display and a headphone output with volume control.
The front panel is aluminium and according to Onkyo, it reduces resonance and delivers cleaner playback.
UK and European pricing is yet to be announced, but the US price is just $349 – roughly £262 / €305 / AU$405 before tax. That means it's very competitive with the likes of the Marantz CD6007.
The Icon C-30 will be available from October 2025.
