Cambridge Audio - any good?

bunking_off

epninety wrote: »

Maybe I'm just very unlucky? :rotfl:

Think you are. Or perhaps I'm lucky? I've had Cambridge amplifier (A5), DAB (DAB300) and CD player (CD5) for about 4 or 5 years with no problems.

tweeter

Are they still made in China/Malaysia under license?

epninety

They were all bought at different times, the last being the DAB tuner, but that was probably 3 years ago.

There was no problem with the build quality itself - by which I mean the standard of build - the wiring, soldering and assembly was all fine, better in fact than you might find in a lot of consumer kit. (The circuit boards were not high quality, as I remember, but not unexpected at the price either). I put the failure of the CD player and amp down to use of the cheapest possible components. I make no judgements about the DAB tuner, maybe just bad luck.

The CD player of course used a standard transport mechanism, bought in from another manufacturer. I assumed there was a problem internal to that and didn't look any further.

The amplifier used a pair of integrated power amplifier modules - I don't recall which one. I replaced them both with new parts, and changed a few capacitors in the power supply. I suspect the power supply caused the amplifer module to fail, but don't know. I believe my mate still uses it, he certainly never mentioned its death.

The DAB tuner uses a bought in DAB module from Frontier Silicon. I didn't try to trace the fault beyond checking the internal antenna cable, as I'd had enough of CA kit dropping dead on me by then :rolleyes:

aliEnRIK

Like I said. I believe they use (I said 'build' before which was wrong really) better components now. So I'd guess those types of problems are few and far between now.

I COMPLETELY understand you losing faith in them though epninety. I would have too had that been me

Traveller1981

As long as your dont want this amp for surround sound, then you cant go wrong with cambridge audio. I have one of their AV receivers and its fantastic.
It might be a silly thing to mention, but some people do literally think an amp is an amp and they all do the same thing. Just read some posts on AVForums