Anthony’s Blog

Maybe it was the irresistibility of the Cambridge Azur 851W or maybe I struck a chord with tales of my “Forced March” into old age: in either case, my last blog generated an unusually high number of responses, the first of which came from my good friend—and oldest client—Jerry Willsie of Straight Wire. Jerry loved the blog and suggested that I try the amps with a pair of Straight Wire Pro Thunder Power Cords. Five days later, the cables arrived at my doorstep.

At $700 for a one-meter cable, Pro Thunder is, in absolute terms, expensive. In relative terms, however, it’s a downright bargain!  Straight Wire’s flagship AC Cable is actually less expensive than many companies’ entry-level product but its build quality is absolutely top-of-the-line, employing the superb WattGate connectors at either end with artistically accomplished terminations: shrink-wrapped, crimpled and encapsulated in silver solder. Eight Compressed, 14-gauge OFHC (Oxygen Free High Conductivity Copper) conductors—3 for each polarity and a pair for the ground path—add up to 9 AWG of ultra-pure copper for both positive and negative power paths: more than enough to handle 20 amps. (Interestingly, Straight Wire recommends their less expensive “Black Thunder II” Power Cord as the sonically superior choice for source components, where current draw isn’t an issue. Gotta admire this company’s downwardly-mobile honesty!) The white mesh “Tech-Flex” jacketing adds an upscale aesthetic.

Driving the Cambridge AZUR 851Ws, the Pro Thunders improved dynamics across the volume range, but especially at the highest output levels, where musical climaxes of all genres were at once more relaxed and composed. At the other extreme, silent passages seemed marginally more silent and backgrounds blacker which, in turn, seemed to render images with a touch more dimensionality.

The preceding description is an accurate assessment of my listening sessions. It is also cliché. Audiophiles expect High End power cords to lower noise and improve high-level dynamics and the Pro Thunder most certainly does. What was more impressive was the manner in which these cords added humanity to the music: inflection, breathiness, that silence in between the notes that is as important as the notes themselves.

At $700 each, the Pro Thunders are more than a third the cost of the ($1,699 MSRP) Azur 851W power amps with which they were used. So, the question becomes: are they worth the money? For me and, I believe, most audiophiles, the answer is obvious, as cabling has become a component in its own right and the Pro Thunders endowed the Cambridge amps with a greater degree of refinement than they—or any other high-power amps at this price range—otherwise exhibited. More importantly, in a world where Power Cords routinely cost over $10,000 (really), the Pro Thunder delivers a family-sized serving of the very best available for an insignificant fraction of the price.

I wonder what a system wired entirely with Straight Wire Power Cords—Black Thunder on the front end, Pro Thunder on the back—would sound like? Highly recommended.

Cambridge Azur 851W: For Golden Ears In Their Golden Years

In less than 2 months I’ll turn 60 and, unlike the ageless Michael Fremer, I’ll need to start changing my lifestyle to reflect my years. I’ll contemplate clipping coupons, shopping on Wednesdays for the Senior Citizens Discount, joining AARP, moving to an “Over 55” community and referring to everyone as “Sonny” or “Kid.” And of course, the half-million-dollar stereo will have to go because at my age, I’ve been told I can no longer hear the difference.

I mention all of this because I recently purchased “Budget” amps for my shore house: not because I can’t hear, however, but because I CAN. The centerpiece of my shore house system is a Bespoke Audio passive preamp, which both Fremer and the dear departed Art Dudley reviewed—and loved—in Stereophile. Still, despite what Bespoke says about “Universal compatibility,” this passive didn’t like many of the amps, even some insanely expensive ones, with which I’ve partnered it. It’s worth the effort though, not just because this preamp has the potential to sound great—ultra pure and dead-nuts quiet—but because it is the single most beautiful high-end component I’ve ever owned. Visitors to my home routinely stare at it with lust and envy. I like that!

For the past couple of years, I’ve used the Bespoke with a few carefully chosen, very expensive amps and it sounded pretty damn fine, in part because I was driving an efficient pair of speakers. Recently, I changed to less sensitive loudspeakers and dynamics suffered, a point that was driven home when Tom Altobelli, President of Woodbridge Stereo, visited, looked admiringly at the preamp and asked about it. When I told him it was a passive he knowingly nodded “That explains it.” I immediately understood. And agreed.

So, here’s the part where my impending decrepitude comes in: I knew I needed a more compatible amp and if it were ten years ago, money wouldn’t have been an object but now, my miserly older self told me it was.  Which is how I wound up with a pair of Cambridge Audio Azur 851Ws.

Despite my newfound frugality, I actually hadn’t price-shopped the 851Ws, rather, I was searching for maximum input sensitivity and input impedance. At 0.775 mV and 38 kOhms (both figures for Bridged, Balanced Input) respectively, not to mention 500 Watts into 8 Ohms and 800 into 4, these are the most appropriately-spec-ed power amps in my rep portfolio. Then I looked at the price. At $1,699 MSRP each, they’re also the least expensive power amplifiers I sell, as well as the most versatile, offering both XLR and RCA inputs and outputs, two pairs of binding posts per channel, 12V triggers, remote control, switchable Stereo/Bridged/Biamped modes as well as switchable AC Voltage and a bunch of other goodies that make the 851W work in situations where most amps won’t.

I’m old enough to remember the hoopla surrounding the ADCOM GFA-555 when it debuted in the ‘80’s. Also 200 Watts Per Channel into 8 Ohms it became, for a decade, the benchmark for entry-level high end amplifiers. And yet, it couldn’t approach the 851W’s gorgeous aluminum casework, its connector complement and connection versatility, the discrete toroidal transformers for input and amplifier circuits…or its sound. The onset of old age has undoubtedly dulled my sonic memory but I don’t recall the 555 being nearly this refined, nor did it combine treble airiness and detail with a total lack of transistor grain the way the 851 does.

I spent much of last Friday installing the 851Ws, rebuilding my racks and rewiring my entire system to accommodate them. As I wrote earlier in this blog, these two amps—at under $3,400 MSRP per pair—replaced a vastly more expensive stereo amp (name withheld to protect the innocent) and outperformed it from the moment I turned them on. (Sensitivity and compatibility have something to do with this, but not everything.) When my girlfriend—a musically sensitive listener but not an audiophile (thank God!)—arrived in the afternoon, she had no idea that I’d changed gear but she immediately heard an improvement and asked why the system sounded so much better…why the little details that replicate reality were so much more present. She got it right away, without any coaching from me.

The next day, Tom Altobelli came over for dinner again and sitting at the table, back to the stereo, he noticed something different and asked me what had changed. Tom is a Cambridge Audio dealer and glancing at the 851Ws behind him, remarked “I just sold one to an old client and he loves it! Any idea why it’s so cheap?” Honestly, I have no idea how Cambridge does it but I’m happy they do and even happier I bought mine.

The Cambridge Azur 851W is certainly an ideal “Entry-level” amp for aspiring high-enders but, on a selfish note, it also seems the perfect amp for “Golden Ear” music lovers entering their Golden Years: they’re powerful enough to drive most any speaker, versatile enough to work in any system and, at $1,699 each, inexpensive enough to respect the retirement account. The only problem I can see is that, as these amps are built to last a lifetime, they’ll probably survive their aged owners. Choose your heirs wisely….

Nobody loves an In-Wall.

No aspiring rock star ever says: “When I become rich and famous, I’m going to snag a pair of mediocre speakers that I can cut into my wall, paint over and ignore.”  World-class audio is the stuff of dreams, yet it becomes ever more difficult for qualified customers to buy it.

Back in the 1980s, Cerwin-Vega’s ad slogan was: “Life in order of importance-Food, Shelter, and a Pair of Very Loud Speakers.  “Those were the days! In the system-design articles I wrote during my freelance days, I routinely simplified the speaker selection process with the quote, “speakers make sound by moving air.”  The more air you want to move, the bigger the speaker (and/or drivers) needed. During my stint as Automotive Editor at Maxim, I often borrowed the phrase, “there’s no replacement for displacement,” which explains the direct relationship between power and engine size. What these auto and audio examples have in common is that you can’t cheat the laws of physics: if you want more horsepower, you need a bigger engine; if you want more bass or sound pressure, you need a bigger loudspeaker.

During the twenty-three years since I started Specialty Sound and Vision, no component category has changed as dramatically as Loudspeakers. Before the 90s, most consumers bought box-type speakers, either Towers or Monitors, after visiting a local HiFi store, consulting with a salesman, auditioning multiple models and choosing the speaker best suited to their taste.

Those days are gone. Few customers visit HiFi stores anymore, in part because there are ever-fewer stores and in part because purchasing behavior has changed. In the past, great sound was a priority and those individuals able to afford top-notch equipment would actively seek out the best gear: visiting dealers, reading magazines and soliciting expert advice. Nowadays, most affluent buyers abdicate their “sound decisions” to decorators or architects whose product choices are determined by visual impact or, more precisely, lack thereof. One of the largest integrators in our territory told us that Invisibles comprised eighty percent of their speaker sales and the best-selling models from virtually every speaker company—even High End ones—are architectural.

During my life in audio, loudspeakers have marched the “Trail of tears” from Tower, to Bookshelf, to In-Wall, to In-Ceiling and finally…Invisibles. At every step of the journey, sound suffered, to the point where today’s standard “Millionaire’s System” is at once more expensive and worse-sounding than those of two decades ago.

Don’t get me wrong, HiFi equipment has steadily improved and if we’re comparing “Apples to Apples” there are compelling sonic improvements to be had in the latest gear. Problem is, we’ve moved from Analog to Digital to Bluetooth, from Tubes to Transistors to ICs, from Towers to Bookshelves to In-walls to Invisibles. Convenience, installation-friendliness and domestic acceptability have skyrocketed…at the expense of performance.

So, here we are in the twenty first century, at a time when High End Audio has realized its ultimate expression, hawking a bunch of wimpy, low-performance products which condemn consumers to the sonic stone-age. Designers and architects seem contemptuous of High End Audio. Customers—and we’ve witnessed this—request great sound, only to have performance beaten down by designers who couldn’t care less about performance. End users still care. We recently met with a music-loving “Master of the Universe” who hired Elvis Costello and Joan Jett to play his birthday party. After his integrator spec-ed and installed a house full of invisibles, the fellow called his salesman, screaming “Get this shit out of my house NOW!!!” As I write this, Leon President Noah Kaplan is custom-designing bespoke speakers that will combine luxury aesthetics with the performance this customer demands.

Big bland boxes precipitated the downfall of in-room loudspeakers and the rise of architectural alternatives. Think back to your Large Advent, Acoustic Research AR-3a or KLH Nine from the late 70s: pretty sloppy, in retrospect, and certainly nothing one would proudly display in a modern living room. Now, think about the latest Wilson Wamm, Maarten Coltrane, EgglestonWorks Viginti, etc. These are gorgeous, intricately-shaped objects which radiate quality and exclusivity…and that’s before you turn them on! High End speakers can be as sculpturally stunning as they are sonically sublime. They can be objects of profound pride and admiration, if we can only convince designers to spec them and integrators to sell them.

The central point is this: big speakers can be beautiful. They don’t disappear the way architectural and invisibles do…and that’s the point! If we accept that a speaker will be seen, we can choose something that looks as special as it sounds, enhancing décor instead of competing with it. I’ve spoken to a couple of “heavy-hitter” architects and there is genuine enthusiasm for integrating large, high-performance speakers into the design of high end living spaces. For integrators, the margin from a single pair of “Statement” loudspeakers easily exceeds the profit of a dozen pairs of Architecturals.
Better quality for the consumer, more profit for the dealer and a design showcase for the architect. Everyone wins. All that remains is for dealers to initiate a return to performance….

Yours,
Anth