Edge of the seat stuff

Cambridge Audio, which is part of Audio Partnership, has grown from its position in the 1990s when it was redefined as an entry-level hi-fi brand — solid yet affordable, a little like NAD, and re-established (by then in its third incarnation) as a house brand for the UK’s Richer Sounds hi-fi stores, with which Audio Partnership had, well, an audio partnership.

But in Australia, Cambridge Audio has instead held its own (and rather higher than entry-level) reputation. And as time has passed that rep has risen everywhere with the lifting levels of models and performance.

Yet this is the first time in many years that the company has gone to the level of the Edge. Indeed some might think this a first ever tilt at the upper echelons of hi-fi delivered to celebrate the brand’s 50 years. But as Audio Partnership’s James Johnson-Flint notes in our interview following this review, there were 20 years of Cambridge products before his company redefined the brand, and among those was the world’s most expensive CD player at the time, the two-box Cambridge CD1.

There’s more harking back to that early past in the product name, not merely a pointer to its edginess or cutting-edginess, rather memorialising Gordon Edge, the inventor of Cambridge Audio’s first product, the P40 integrated amp. Edge was not only the notable first to put a toroidal transformer in an audio amplifier, his career as an engineer inspired so many other engineers and innovations during his lifetime that he’s seen as central in the city of Cambridge’s reputation as a research and innovation hub (see panel).

Equipment

It’s appropriate, then, that the products bearing his name come so loaded with the latest technological innovations, as well as presenting such solidity and presence. The range includes the ‘A’ integrated amplifier priced $7999, but for this review we received the separate preamplifier and power amplifier combination, the Edge NQ, and the Edge W. And they are quite the pair, sharing seriously massive aluminium cases, the preamp 12cm high, the power amp larger at 15cm high, both a full 40cm deep and weighing, respectively, 10.2kg and