CEDIA 2010 Coverage

September 27, 2010

Cambridge Audio

Cambridge Audio showed a lot of products at CEDIA which were well thought-out and well made. They offer excellent value and offer a glimpse of the high-end, although at the very entry-level.

First up is the new IP100 iPd Dock ($299). It works with all manner of iPods, the iPhone and the iPad. What sets it apart from the pack is that, like the Wadia i70, it taps the digital signal through the connector, bypassing the less than stellar analog section of the iPod. I don’t know why more companies don’t take this approach. Perhaps it is an Apple licensing issue.

Another neat product is the Sonata NP30 network music player ($599). It connects to your network via either Wi-Fi or Ethernet and can stream almost any music file you can throw at it, including those at 96/24. It also gives you access to over 15,000 internet radio stations.

Here it is in silver paired-up with a Sonata AV30 2.1 audio/video receiver ($549).

Also available in the small form-factor Sonata series are the CD30 CD player ($399) and the Sonata DV30 upsampling 1080p HDMI DVD player ($299).

Moving up the food chain, here are the Azur 550T AM/FM tuner ($399), the Azur 550C CD player ($599), and the Azur 60 watt/channel integrated amplifier ($599)

Moving another step up are the Azur 650 BD Blu-ray HDMI 1.3 player ($699) and the Azur 650R 7.1 audio/video receiver ($1,599) with 7 x 100 watts of power.

Getting into audiophile territory are the Azur 840C upsampling CD player ($1,595), the Azur 840E preamplifier ($1,595), and the Azur 840W 200 watts/channel power amplifier ($2,395).

Notice that the Azur 840C CD player has two digital inputs.

I was surprised they showed the DACMagic 192/24 USB DAC ($429) with the analog only IA50 video iPod dock ($179). The IA100 iPod shown above ($299) with digital output would have been a better pairing.