Cambridge Audio Azur 640C v 2.0 and 640A v 2.0

By Brent Burmester

February 2007

Cambridge Audio Azur 640C v 2.0 CD player and 640A v 2.0 integrated amplifier. $999 each.

Cambridge Audio's 640 CD player (click for larger image)

Cambridge Audio 640A amplifier (click for larger image)

Rear panel of the amplifier (click for larger image)

No, don’t hit ‘back’ on your browser, you’ve come to the right place. They do look rather like the original 640 pairing reviewed in June ‘04, but I assure you they are quite something else. You’ll have to take a can-opener to them to find the differences, but even people who take can-openers to hi-fi equipment will see that substantial modifications have been made to the version 2.0, er, versions.

The innards

Starting with the 640c player, there’s new filtering circuitry, an uprated toroidal transformer, and you’ll find not one, as per the original, but two Wolfson WM8740 digital to analogue converters, one for each channel.

The amp is similarly reconfigured within. The 65watts per channel of old are now lifted to 75, thanks to a beefier transformer, and sundry tweakery in the power amp department. Input selection and pre-amplification is re-designed, and I believe this is where the most significant improvements stem from in this pairing. The Version 2.0 640A has also been fitted with the inputs and outputs needed to integrate it with Cambridge’s Incognito multi-room entertainment system. This seems to be an increasingly popular feature at this end of the market, where brands compete on feature-count. More importantly, these new bells and whistles have done no harm to sound quality.

Just as an aside, they’ve made the volume knob a bit meatier, too. I dissed it in my ’04 review, so now you know who they’re watching over there at Cambridge Audio.

The Earnards

As for sound, the Version 2.0 pairing certainly constitutes an improvement over the already excellent originals. The CD player exhibits very high resolution, and human voices come across in an extremely natural fashion. Indeed, there’s a good chance the Azur will let you to finally decrypt those mumbled lyrics bothering you on that one track since the mid-1970s. Perhaps the player wants for just a smidgeon more warmth and fluidity, but it’s certainly not bass-shy, in fact everything is where it should be in the lower registers, and tightly controlled too, given the price point.

The dual DACs make their presence felt in very good channel separation, with strong imaging around and between the speakers. Only on very involved multi-instrumental tracks did the 640c sound anything less than fully composed, but at the limit there was a little bit of confusion as to who was sitting where. I would count this a bit of an issue if there were an extra zero on the 640c’s price tag.

I have to quibble, so I’d identify the player’s tonal palette as the once area it could probably should do better. There’s need of softer hues, pastels, smudgier and smokier sorts of shades. Not that the 640c is all primary colours and Mondrian edginess, but where a track needs to sound a bit grimy and wine-soaked the Azur can come over a little too well-groomed. To be fair, its only grimy, wine-soaked audiophiles who are likely to be dismayed at this news, and I fancy they’re too busy delousing their antique valve monoblocs to be reading this.

The 640A was the lesser light of the originals, but I’m persuaded that it has gained a great deal of ground on its CD companion. As I mentioned above, I put this down mainly to the pre-amp improvements. Transparency and articulation are greater, and the sound is altogether more lively.

Of course, some of the greater drive and speed derives from the higher power, but the big leap forward is in the subtlety and detail that this amp now conveys. It now has that ‘come out and play’ factor that its predecessor lacked, an enthusiasm for music that infects its owner, and leads to too many late nights and money frittered away on new CD racks.

Conclusion

This pairing rocked in it’s original guise, and now they’re both even better, the amp especially. As a team I have no idea what you might prefer in their price bracket – they just seem ridiculously competent.

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