Cambridge instead of Naim?

March 31, 2010

I’ve been looking at the Cambridge Azur 740A integrated amplifier along with a Cambridge 740C CD player. I have not been able to find enough reviews about the brand or the products. Would you recommend this brand? I liked the Naim Uniti but the price . . .

Thanks and regards,

Siggy

The few reviews we’ve done of Cambridge Audio equipment over the years have been positive. Our reviewers have generally liked what they’ve heard and Cambridge's prices are always competitive. The Naim is a fantastic piece -- you can read our full review on sister site SoundStageXperience.com on April 1. Is the Cambridge as good as the Naim? I’m not sure. It’s certainly worth seeking out for an audition.

Spades or bananas?

March 24, 2010

I am getting new speaker wires. Should I go with spades or bananas for terminations?

Randall Jones

We get this question all the time, but it’s worth answering again because many people wonder about this and it’s not an either/or answer. We prefer banana plugs because they don’t slip off binding posts as easily as spade lugs do. On the other hand, some people prefer spades and have no trouble with them slipping. It also depends on the quality of connectors -- there are good and bad spades, good and bad bananas. So there are pros and cons to both connection types. Simply pick a good-quality connector of either type and you’ll likely be happy.

Take me to the Moon

March 17, 2010

I need your help in order to solve a small problem: I want to buy a Simaudio Moon i5.3 integrated amplifier. My loudspeakers have a impedance of 8 ohms and a sensitivity of 87dB. Is that amplifier powerful enough to drive my loudspeakers? I appreciate your help.

Kind regards,

Fernando

Your speakers present a load that's about average. The i5.3 is rated by Simaudio to deliver 85Wpc into 8 ohms or 130Wpc into 4 ohms. That should be enough for most applications; however, whether it is truly enough power will also depend on how large your room is and how loud you like to play your music.

Does Blu-ray sound better?

March 14, 2010

Friends tell me that the new Blu-ray Discs sound better than DVDs. I don’t see how this is possible. Isn’t it all just surround sound?

Leonard Chang

The key surround formats for DVD are Dolby Digital and DTS. Unfortunately, both of these are "lossy" compressed formats, meaning that they discard some data in order to reduce bits. This is sort of like stereo MP3, which uses a lossy compression algorithm to make small files; in comparison, CD, which supports stereo also, has no compression at all. CD sounds better. Blu-ray supports a number of high-resolution surround-sound formats that far exceed the resolution of what DVD provides, and actually exceeds the resolution of CD as well. So, yes, Blu-ray does sound better.

Does paint color matter?

March 10, 2010

A friend of mine said that different paint-color finishes can affect a speaker's sound. Is this true?

Robert Gestron

I suspect your friend might believe in the Tooth Fairy too. Rest assured: if the paint color is the only difference, there will be no difference in sound.

Single-driver speakers

March 5, 2010

A friend of mine swears by single-driver speakers. You guys never review them. Why not?

Todd McLane

We don’t have reviews on them because there aren’t that many on the market. We concentrate more on what’s readily available to review and for consumers to buy. But we’re not oblivious to the fact that they do exist and some people like them. Perhaps in the future you’ll see some reviews here.