I would not, personally, put the Droplet ahead of the Cambridge unless you like fuzzy sound. I once reviewed the Droplet, and found it warm, fuzzy and not terribly pure sounding, as though all the instruments had a halo around it. I noticed one of my colleagues also wrote about it for Soundstage, I believe, and noted the same thing (maybe we had the same model). This was around 2005.
The Cambridge is considerably purer sounding, perhaps to the point of being less forceful (purity, something the Goldmund Mimesis 9 amp had in spades, sometimes means "it doesn't 'let go'" of the sound. The Cambridge is slightly restrained, but I haven't tested it in balanced mode, where it was said by Robert Harley to have more muscular bass. For all that, the treble on the Cambridge has a purity that is NOT boring: it is tonally lovely, without being technicolor. In fact, I hear the amp more than the CD player, and I had a Parasound JC2 for a few weeks, but couldn't get around the lightweight sound of it and the Cambridge combined, even with ASL Hurricanes, which means the two preceding components were pretty lightweight indeed!
I don't recall liking the Droplet very much at all, due to the murkiness of the sound. Too mushy for me. Perhaps the Droplet got updated after the reviews, which were back in 2005 and doesn't sound mushy now.
The Cambridge is considerably purer sounding, perhaps to the point of being less forceful (purity, something the Goldmund Mimesis 9 amp had in spades, sometimes means "it doesn't 'let go'" of the sound. The Cambridge is slightly restrained, but I haven't tested it in balanced mode, where it was said by Robert Harley to have more muscular bass. For all that, the treble on the Cambridge has a purity that is NOT boring: it is tonally lovely, without being technicolor. In fact, I hear the amp more than the CD player, and I had a Parasound JC2 for a few weeks, but couldn't get around the lightweight sound of it and the Cambridge combined, even with ASL Hurricanes, which means the two preceding components were pretty lightweight indeed!
I don't recall liking the Droplet very much at all, due to the murkiness of the sound. Too mushy for me. Perhaps the Droplet got updated after the reviews, which were back in 2005 and doesn't sound mushy now.