Cambridge Audio Cxc Review Will It Wirk With Parasound

So, I'd bought myself the magnificent Moon 280D DAC. (How magnificent? Read about it here.) This was going to be the device handling all my digital audio – from its ain inbuilt streamer, from my DAB+ radio receiver, and from my CD player/ship, whatever that may be. I'd originally planned to use my aging Denon DCD-755AR to do that job via its optical output but decided to add a bit of class. I settled on the Cambridge Sound CXC Series ii Single Speed CD Transport.

Was this a expert choice?

tl;dr

• CD-only transport
• Digital-merely output. S/PDIF via TOSLINK and coaxial digital audio (RCA)
• 430mm wide, 315mm deep, 85mm tall
• Nicely weighty metallic structure, four.55kg
• Optical remote included, although functionality limited
• Optimised for operation with other Cambridge Audio CX series devices, just works fine outside that environs
• Smooth, serenity and fast operation
• Turns itself off after a set time (can be disabled)
• No CD-ROM support (eg. for MP3 or WMA files)
• But fine with CD-Rs
• Adequate resistance to disc skipping due to physical shocks
• Coped adequately with CDs with minor scuffing
• Space grey finish looked fine with both black and aluminium/silver terminate of my other components
• Brandish a bit dim, especially from directly in front
• Insofar equally a CD send contributes to (or detracts from) sound quality, sound quality was tiptop notch
• Toll: $1099
• Bachelor at fine high-fidelity retailers, including here.

Why the Cambridge Audio CXC Serial 2 … and what's that nigh "Single Speed"?

Truth is, I would have preferred to go for the Moon 260D CDT transport, but the bucks were piling up. Affordability became an of import consideration and the CXC was less than a third of the price of the Moon.

One extremely attractive element of the CXC is that, like the Moon 260D, information technology is a "single speed" transport. Why would this be of any kind of importance?

The disc bulldoze in the Cambridge Audio CXC Serial 2 CD send was developed specifically for audio CD playback. Cambridge Audio says that it is:

our renowned "S3" servo blueprint, and it has class-leading levels of jitter rejection and error correction – no multi-purpose drive is able to compete with the the CXC's levels of precision and stability.

What's that near a "multi-purpose drive"? Well, DVD players will play CDs. Blu-ray players will play DVDs and CDs. SACD players will play CDs. I've got a couple of Oppo players that will play CDs, DVDs, SACDs and Blu-rays. Those dissimilar formats share a physically like disc, but actual data density varies considerably – the sizes of the pits and lands and spacing of the data tracks. It'due south probably less common now, only I would discover a decade or more than back that supposedly highly reputable high-fidelity brands would build CD players effectually what were essentially reckoner disc drives.

I imagine that they work well enough. Simply practice they work as well as a player which is optimised for discs with pits and lands to be of a size specified for CD? Maybe. But if you're simply planning to play CDs, why bother with disc spinners that read other stuff?

(By the fashion, "unmarried speed" means that it doesn't rev-upwards to handle other formats. CD itself is non single speed. It is a CLV – constant linear velocity – format, so the initial rotational speed of the disc as it starts at the centre is around 500rpm, and it gradually slows to virtually 200 rpm equally it reaches the perimeter.)

Practicalities

The construction of the CXC was impressive, with a decent thickness to its aluminium forepart plate and a weight, according to my scales, of iv.55 kilograms (Cambridge Audio says four.7).

The onetime Denon was liberally festooned with controls. No then the CXC. The front panel is adorned with just six buttons, plus the tray and display. The buttons do what you lot'd look: on/standby, eject/load, play/pause, stop, skip reverse and skip forwards. A scrap surprising to me is that none of the buttons work – specifically the squirt button would have been useful – to wake up the player if it's in standby. You have to press that push kickoff.

The remote control is interesting in a not-so-good way. It'south a combo remote for the Cambridge Audio CX range. And so it controls the CX-range amplifier and the CX-range network receiver in improver to the CXC disc spinner. This terminal gets all of twelve keys. Adding to the forepart panel controls are fast forrard and fast contrary, repeat, random, and a display dim push. And most of the keys are correct downwardly the bottom of a long remote command, and thus a little harder to apply.

The player is really capable of being programmed – something I've never done, even though I've had programmable players all the way since the original Sony CDP-101 in the early on 1980s. And it is also capable of jumping directly to numbered tracks, if yous have a remote fitted with number keys. Looking through the comments on Cambridge Audio's U.s. site regarding this transport, someone complained virtually the remote and Cambridge Audio responded that the CXC Series 2 is compatible with the remote for the Cambridge Audio Azur 851C CD player/DAC/Preamplifier.

I recently purchased a Logitech Harmony remote (model 650 - $88 at Officeworks, quite a flake more elsewhere) for other reasons, so I was able to quickly add the Azur 851C remote functionality to it. Information technology worked well, and considerably expanded the convenience of using the player.

If y'all're the kind of listener who'd prefer to only pop on a CD and savour it from kickoff to end, the way the music producers intended, then you'll exist fine with the included remote.

Fifty-fifty though in that location is a control on the remote to dim the brandish or turn it off, I'd suggest few people will turn it down. It is quite a strange display. When I was taking photos for this folio, I was trying to get a front-on closeup of the display … and it was invisible. For some reason the brandish is barely visible from directly on its level, and quite weak in brightness inside a few degrees vertically of dead on. I am finding information technology very hard to read from two metres away in a room merely indirectly lit by exterior light. Compare the brightness in the superlative photo –taken  roughly on level with the display – to the second photo taken from an bending. In any case, the brightest display setting is simply not very bright.

By default, the unit of measurement switches itself off afterward half an hour of not-use. You lot can change this to a different period of time (1 hour or two hours) or disable information technology. Once more past default, the unit does not autoplay whenever you insert a disc, merely you can modify this too.

Finally, one interesting quirk: the track skip buttons are continuous. Skip forrard from the terminal track and it starts playing the first i, skip backwards from the first track and the last track starts playing.

Using the Cambridge Audio CXC CD ship

I doubt very much that the Cambridge Sound CXC CD send contributes anything special to sound quality. I'1000 very much of a bits-are-$.25 view regarding digital audio … so long as a minimum level of competence is met. Meeting that minimum level provides a bit perfect stream for the DAC to do its work upon. These days information technology's relatively like shooting fish in a barrel for equipment makers to meet that minimum level.

Only the trickiest part of that when it comes to CDs is ensuring a clean read of the data from the CD. The mechanical parts of high-fidelity sound delivery are unremarkably the hardest to get correct.

The CXC certainly seemed to perform a perfect task on that with all of the commencement batch of CDs I used. The problem is that, for review purposes, even though some of my CDs are ancient every bit these things become, coming from an LP groundwork I 've ever treated them every bit well as I care for the vinyl. As I'thou writing these words, the CXC is happily spinning the debut Dire Straits anthology which I purchased at the same fourth dimension as I bought the same Sony CDP-101. I think it was 1983, merely may have been 1984. So even though it's nearly 40 years onetime, it's sounding pretty practiced in parts, although the remastered version is rather smoother. The weaknesses have nothing to practise with data retrieval just with the mastering quality of early CDs.

What else do we have hither? Ah, another from the beginning batch of purchases. There was very footling available on CD at the outset, so I bought some recordings back so which I probably wouldn't accept had there been more option. It has been years since I've played Guilty by Barbra Streisand, but hither it is now, playing flawlessly in the CXC. Tracking perfect. Sound, terrible. Crunchy, trebly, recessed lower midrange that makes the whole experience thin and harsh. I've never bothered to look for a remastered version.

Okay, non everyone has been equally careful with their CDs as me, then I've only taken a lilliputian trip down to the local charity shop to find some scratched and scuffed CDs. It turned out that the CDs they carried were in distressingly expert nick. Nevertheless I did find a few in less than stellar status. And then as I'grand writing this, Miley Cyrus's second album (in her own proper noun) Breakout is playing and sounding good, despite a fair level of surface scuffing and random pockmarks on the deejay.

This continued through the collection I'd gathered. So I took up a fairly messy 1 – this the CD-single version of Sheryl Crow'due south "All I Wanna Do" – and enhanced the damage with a tangential scratch. That was the player's undoing, with the CD becoming unplayable at that point. Only it kept on trying for some minutes and eventually made its way by the damage.

Importantly, if I grew impatient a tap on the skip key readily jumped it to the adjacent track. Which, in this instance, was not markedly damaged.

All of which goes to prove that the CXC is tolerant of some surface harm, but not a full lineal centimetre of obscured data. (Meanwhile, I'one thousand regretting using this one to scratch … the songs – I'd not been familiar with them – are really very adept.)

One thing about the CXC I particularly liked was the tranquility and smooth disc tray. Information technology was far less buzzy than the norm.

The player wasn't peculiarly susceptible to skipping. I could go far jump by rapping sharply on the surface on which information technology was mounted, but jump equally hard equally I could on the wooden floor, playback remained steady.

Decision

The Cambridge Sound CXC Serial two is a solid, constructive and fashionable CD transport. It looks similar I made a wise purchasing decision.

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Source: https://addictedtoaudio.com.au/blogs/reviews/cambridge-audio-cxc-series-2-single-speed-cd-transport

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