Cambridge EVO 150
Cambridge Audio has been known for their quality budget minded consumer. They recently have pushed into the audiophile market with their Edge series. The Edge A amplifier, $6,000 has many of the same features as amps the same target market.
It has been harder to peg Cambridge’s exact consumer level they have been trying to carve out their footprint. The CXN v2 streamer is excellent. Their 851a amp was an excellent offering, though some had a problem turning off just after being turned on and eventually bricking.
The EVO line is marketed in no-mans land. At $3,000 it is more expensive than budget minded but not anywhere the sound of a good amp plus streamer and dac from some other names and from Cambridge. If those true audiophile-level components were purchased used for your hard earned $3,000 then the EVO 150 doesn’t even enter the race.
i’ve not heard the EVO 75 and the reviews out there say that it is vastly underpowered. It is nice that we have some forum reviewers who can hold these companies to task with their stated RMS and at what output and what acceptable THD.
The EVO 150 has all of the usual awards, mostly from places we have never heard of. Similar to typing who makes the best on Google and it will always take you to Amazon. Big name magazines sell their names, such as PC Magazine’s best mouse pal.
Like many other class d amplifiers this has a smaller footprint. I will not speak of the low heat because frankly, who really cares. Everyone wants to know about functions and quality of sound.
The EVO 150 is named for evolution but a better moniker would be Prius-like hybrid ECO technology. It had a built in dac and streamer, not the dual Wolfsons as it their CXN v2. The EVO uses the ESS Sabre entry level 9018 2 channel chipset.
There is no external power supply, mostly expected. The toroidal power has been replaced with something cheaper and smaller, perhaps because the class d doesn’t need such a large one.
It has a built in streamer, hence the all-in-one. The CXN v2 streamer is not the same.
Their highest Edge A amp in contrast, does have a toroidal power supply, dual chipset, a 24/384 streamer and at 100wpc has an incredible amount of listenable headroom.
I paired this test with B&W 802 Diamond 2 set 6 feet out from the wall. Great quality disconnects and 10g speaker cables were used, whatever that means.
I sat back with my audio chair in the same place. Another person plugged in Cherry monos using CXN v2 and Cherry amps. Stream Magic was used as the pre-amp substitute. Next, the CXN v2 streamer was removed from the chain and the Edge A was used. Next, the EVO 150 with internal streamer.
After streaming taken out of the picture, a high res CD was used as the source. For the Cherry amps an inexpensive passive Little Bear was used.
Results: By far the best soundstage and linearity was with the CD and the Cherry amps. Next best quality were the Cherry amps with the Cambridge CXN v2 streamer. Third was the Cambridge Edge A with a CD source. Next was the Edge A with it’s built in streamer. Te Cherrys performed with my amazement considering they have been out of production and technology for a long time now. Fifth and a very distant fifth, the EVO 150 with a CD source. Here it became such an unexpected result: The EVO 150 with it’s internal streamer had zero front to back soundstage. Left to right was barely listenable to an audiophile level. Timber was non-existent. Even though the highest res possible same songs were played on Qubuz, it always sounded like I was in the 90th row.
on a side note, my B&W woofers fluttered prematurely. I turned the music up until I could start to hear timber. I couldn’t achieve it. The guitars sounded like the vocals and the keyboards. It all just blended in. Of course not all was bad. The EVO 150, lacking headroom, did make nice sound coming from the tweeters of the 802’s.
Now this took all afternoon. It was time consuming for the other person to change and to be honest, the Cherry amps with the CD sounded rather similar, but not exact to the Edge A with the CD. The Cherry amps with the CXN v2 streamer was also close to the Egde A with it’s built in streamer. It was the soundstage that set them apart and I could hear the difference. If I did not have the Cherrys and the Edge play one after the other I would not notice a difference after an hour of listening.
The EVO 150 was so underpowered I doubt it is 150wpc when the Edge A was much louder at 100wpc.
Summary: My recommendation is to ignore the nameless awards and listen to the EVO 150 before you buy it. I would not recommend buying the EVO 150 from an online retailer unheard. I would not buy it. It sounded similar to 1980’s $500 Techniques connected to Bose 301’s. Those were fairly good budget units for the day when higher end Sansui, Levinson and McIntosh existed.
