Cambridge DacMagic 200M digital-to-analogue converter Magic numbers

There’s a long history to Cambridge Audio’s DacMagic. The first of its line arrived back in the mid-1990s when ‘off-board’ DACs, as they were called, were still a new notion, the idea being to upgrade the CD players that were becoming increasingly popular.

This was forward thinking by James Johnson-Flint and Julian Richer, who had only recently revived Cambridge Audio by harnessing some of the UK’s top hi-fi designers — Mike Creek was behind their first new product, the outstanding A1 budget amplifier in 1995, followed in 1996 by that original DacMagic. This was a design by John Westlake, who had started his days with legendary turntable company Pink Triangle, designing its surprising DaCapo DAC in 1991. Westlake was involved with the first three DacMagic designs, as well as being hands-on in getting Cambridge’s China manufacturing facilities up to scratch, before later going on to design DACs, amplifiers and other electronics for Peachtree Audio, Audiolab (under IAG) and, more recently, Pro-Ject.

So this is a product with a respected lineage of high performance; that first DacMagic back in 1996 netted Cambridge its first What Hi-Fi? Award, and its descendants have maintained momentum: the miniature DacMagic XS USB DAC took our own Sound+Image Award in 2015. Can the new model maintain Cambridge’s