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Cambridge Audio - on the Edge

...the overall sound is breath-taking – like you’re sat in the recording booth with the musicians.
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BAC+Calibre+Recording+Booth.jpg
 
We’ve seen the tins, seen the advertising, now we need to see what’s inside, for hifi is a product area famous for its price to content (and ability) discrepancies.
 
Seen them in the window at Richers look ok but nothing special , had to double check the price twice ! Not sure they will find many uk customers for these as no brand Kudos even if they are good products
 
I see the network edge has chromecast audio built-in - that would free up a connection for something else!
 
They'll be the same circuitry used in their £500 amps but with bigger power supply, hopefully better quality components and a really fancy case... maybe some boutique capacitors etc...
Probably (I'm making some big assumptions here yes....) the same Doug Self designed bias displacement "blameless" amp circuitry used in earlier models and already well documented by Self as being as optimised as possible.... so what's got so much better to allow another zero on the price?

Not that the above necessarily means they either will or will not be competitive with other makes and models around the same price of course....
 
How about all the experts on here (who haven't heard the amp) and know nothing about running a HiFi company reserve judgment until they have heard and until that time offer some support to a British Company trying to do something postive.

Cambridge have been selling £2k AV amps for a while and know what they're doing.
 
Arkless Electronics said:
They'll be the same circuitry used in their £500 amps but with bigger power supply, hopefully better quality components and a really fancy case... maybe some boutique capacitors etc...
Probably (I'm making some big assumptions here yes....) the same Doug Self designed bias displacement "blameless" amp circuitry used in earlier models and already well documented by Self as being as optimised as possible.... so what's got so much better to allow another zero on the price?

Not that the above necessarily means they either will or will not be competitive with other makes and models around the same price of course....
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That's the same type of thing you said about the Tron Convergence which turned out to be totally incorrect.
 
clap said:
That's the same type of thing you said about the Tron Convergence which turned out to be totally incorrect.
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Quite possibly. I'm making an educated guess based on them saying "we added a bias voltage to a traditional Class AB design" that it's the same basic "class XD" patented by Doug Self/Cambridge Audio/"whatever deal they have" circuitry as the cheaper models. Very often a similar or near identical circuit is used by many manufacturers for both their cheaper and most expensive units with the main difference being bigger power supplies, more output devices and vastly more expensive casework...

If I'd reverse engineered the Tron (not the Convergence BTW) I could have known it's exact topology within an hour but I choose not to as it's current IP from another company... and as it wasn't faulty I didn't need to go as far as even removing the board. IF it had been faulty and IF GT refused to send me schematics to fix it then I would of course had to reverse engineer it... But it was A1 and probably the customer just had a dodgy interconnect or similar... he was worried it was the Tron and had asked me to check it and rule it out, which I did.
Based only on the number and type of valves, the layout and type of surrounding parts etc, all just viewed from looking down at the top of the board, it was a reasonable guess... but wrong on that occasion yes. You can't be sure without a proper examination of course but my educated guesses on such things have a habit of being right probably 80%+ of the time I can assure you.

A Made in China type British company BTW (CA not Tron!).... for what its worth.... several are these days...
 
I suspect the Cambridge audio stuff is good value from the cheap seats right up to the royal box, given the volumes they get through richer sounds and the apparent quality
 
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