Cambridge Audio EVO 150
In 1968, I was a 2-year-old toddler living in Paris, France—my birthplace—on the 14th floor of a diplomat-occupied apartment complex overlooking the Seine. My dad, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was stationed in Paris, working security at the Canadian embassy. My mom and I were there with him.
At that moment, six hours away by car, across the English Channel in the country next door, a new audio company sprung up and surprised and delighted the audio world with its inaugural product, the 20Wpc Cambridge Consultants P40 integrated amplifier. It sounded especially good and made history as the first amplifier to use a toroidal transformer.
Cambridge Audio emerged from the shadow of Cambridge Consultants. It built amplifiers, tuners, and transmission line speakers and, starting in 1985, the world’s first twobox CD player, the CD1. That was followed by two iconic products: the DacMagic DAC and the 30Wpc A1 integrated amplifier.
I’d look at the EVO with befuddled amusement and wonder how such a compact, unassuming-looking thing could deliver such big sound all by itself.
In the ’80s and ’90s, Cambridge Audio left an indelible mark on me, a young audio idealist of modest means. Along with a handful of other salt-of-the-earth audio companies of that time, Cambridge made near-cutting-edge gear I could aspire to own and instilled in me a belief that while audiophile products might cost more than the ones you could buy at the nearby big-box store, the advantages in performance almost always justify the difference in price.
The EVO 150
The EVO 150 continues Cambridge’s tradition of offering near-cutting-edge products that don’t break the bank. In hifi economics, $3000 is neither especially cheap nor expen sive, but when you consider that the EVO 150 is a
