Hi-Fi: Cambridge Audio Azur 840E/Azur 840W – Review – 74

I had a feeling of inevitability a few years back when I bought my first Cambridge Audio product, the budget Dacmagic D/A converter.
In those days I had a modestly priced hi-fi rig – Rotel monoblocks and preamp, Castle Harlech loudspeakers (sigh); probably the odd man out was my Pink Triangle PT-Too turntable and valve phono stage, but my other pride and joy was an Esoteric P500 transport – and the Dacmagic.
You see, the sound of the Dacmagic/Esoteric combination was an alluring one and hard to beat. I remember A/B auditions between my system and ex-Tone man Steve Smith’s much higher end Plinius/Micromega/Dynaudio system pretty much ended up a dead heat.

A lot of my system’s ability to compete on a sound quality basis was down to the abilities of the budget-busting Cambridge Audio Dacmagic.
The inevitability was, of course, that the company would tire of the budget sector and morph into a high-end company, which is really where Cambridge started back in the late 1960s.

Well Cambridge has certainly gone upmarket of late with the likes of the Azur 840 range. However, it still remains a manufacturer of value hi-fi products. Even the good old Dacmagic is back, and I can’t wait to get my hands on one again.
The purpose of this review, however, is to herald the arrival of Cambridge Audio’s latest and greatest amplification system, the two-box 840E pre-amp and 840W power amplifier.

With a retail price of more than $5000 for the pair, this combo catapults the company into a new league, and sees the duo competing with the likes of Musical Fidelity and lower-range Krell integrateds (and maybe the new Perreaux Eloquence 150i) to name but a few.

So this market space has some hot competition, but I was quietly confident about Cambridge Audio’s chances after my experience with the outstanding Azur 840 integrated amplifier back in 2006. Like the 840A integrated, the new pre/power combo shares an upgraded version of Cambridge Audio’s proprietary Class XD technology, heavyweight build quality and similar aesthetics. I’d call the look ‘smart industrial’: very purposeful but certainly no ugly duckling.

In fact the build quality is quite exceptional. The front panels are made of thick extruded aluminium, while the lattice-work venting on the power amp’s top and side plates lend a touch of class to what can be a very prosaic piece of hi-fi equipment.

Rated at 200W rms per channel, the 840W can be turned into a 500-watt bridged mono amplifier at the flick of a switch – perfect for those difficult-to-drive speakers. If you need more power or want to drive your local town hall PA system, the mono amps can be daisy chained to suit your requirements.

The simple front fascia has a few LEDs to indicate operation mode and a power on/off switch, but a plethora of input/output connections on the rear panel (including balanced) and a hefty set of speaker binding posts signal the serious intent of the 840W.

The 840E preamp is a much more interesting proposition, though. Its large LCD display is flanked by two rows of input buttons with the volume control set on the right-hand side. Both RCA and balanced inputs (x2) plus a pair of balanced outputs are supplied, while the RS232 and Incognito multi-room connections allow flexibility for those with modern smart homes – the amplifier system can be easily configured with Crestron controllers in a sophisticated multi-room entertainment network, for instance.

Naturally, both pre- and power amps are stacked with quality internals, such as dam-busting toroidal transformers and metal-film resistors. Instead of using OEM op-amps for low-level volume, Cambridge Audio has developed its own Terrapin amplifier modules for even better fidelity.
Unpacking the duo was no easy feat; they are on the heavy side (especially the 840W) but there’s no denying the excellent standard of build. The importer had the amplifiers running for quite some time and as such had burned them in, but as usual I set them up and had them playing my iTunes library via the wonderful Logitech Squeezebox Duet while I was at work.

Four days later the real fun began. Cabling my Raysonic CD128 to the British thoroughbreds was a simple task; luckily I had the great fortune (literally) to have acquired some tasty Nordost Heimdall speaker cables to use along with my trusty Blue Heavens.

“Power is nothing without control” is a quote that sprang to mind the first time I sat down for a serious listen. The Cambridge duo held my Opus Ones in a vice-like grip in the bass with the first album I tried, The Golden Palominos’ Pure. Control in this area was quite excellent, as were the soundstaging abilities of the 840E/W – a credible illusion of where each performer was situated on the stage (well, the recording engineer’s impression of the stage).

I liked what I was hearing, but I am nothing if not a hard taskmaster, so I decided to cable my Pro-Ject Studie turntable/Trichord Dino phono stage to the 840E and test the amplifiers with some vinyl, starting with Kraftwerk’s stunningly produced Tour De France double disc. Wow. This is why I love vinyl so much. The audio quality was simply awesome; the dynamism of the sound and subterranean bass had me grinning from ear to ear. Of course, it was always going to at least sound good (it’s an exceptionally good recording), but this was really something special – there was a superior quality to the sound that one doesn’t always experience, even with hi-fi systems costing many times more.

I played everything from Prince to Portishead, Blur to Beethoven and found the Cambridge combo took the signal from my source components and turned it into living, breathing music in my room.

I found the combo played the music right down the middle in terms of neutrality. Only on the odd occasion did I experience a slight touch of brightness to the sound, and that was really down to my choice of recording. A system featuring these components won’t create light from darkness or make a silk purse from a sow’s ear; what you hear is essentially what you get. So the Cambridge combo remains faithful to the recording, yet is neutral enough to be a solid recommendation for just about all loudspeaker/source combinations.
Welcome to the big league, Cambridge Audio; you’ve certainly turned up with your best game.

GARY PEARCE

TECH SPECS

Azur 840E
Pre-Amplifier    $2199
Azur 840W
Power Amplifier     $3199

Azur 840W
Power Amplifier

Power Output: 200W into 8 Ohms, 300W into 4 Ohms, 500W into 8 Ohms bridged mono
Inputs: 1 pair gold plated RCA stereo phono; 1 pair XLR balanced
Outputs: 1 pair gold plated RCA stereo phono; 1 pair XLR balanced
Frequency Response: 10Hz-50kHz +/-1dB
Signal To Noise Ratio: 83dB
THD: <0.0015% @ 1kHz
Dimensions: 430 x 385 x 145mm (W/D/H)
Weight: 21.8kg

Azur 840E 
Pre-Amplifier

Inputs: 8 pairs gold plated RCA stereo phono; 2 pairs XLR balanced
Outputs: 2 pairs gold plated RCA stereo phono, 1 pair XLR balanced
Frequency Response: 10Hz-50kHz +/-1dB
Signal To Noise Ratio: >100dB
THD: <0.0015% @ 1kHz
Dimensions: 430 x 385 x 115(W/D/H)
Weight:

CONTACT

www.pqimports.co.nz

Pros

• High-end sound without the five-figure price tag

• Very nicely built

Cons

• My bank account is empty

Verdict

• Cambridge Audio has staked its claim for high-end cred with an excellent sounding and constructed pre/power combo

This review is from Tone issue #74.