Cambridge Audio Product Reliability

agree. i've the 740c, i repaired the transport mechanism twice. After that the display started to give problems. not only that the cdp will forward or fast reverse on its own. i had to shut it down and restart. U r much luckier. My cdp developed problems right after the 3rd yr. I've retired the cdp and went for a marantz cd 6000ose which is far more reliable.

3 years seems to be too long for Cambridge. Boght years ago their integrated as a gift to my brother that failed in 19mo-s with one channel dead.

I had Cambridge Audio integrated A3i, that was shorting outputs with a lot of hum and smell of power transformer. I found out, talking to designer of this amp, that 4 LED diodes (2 per channel) used as voltage reference for output section, are mounted to close to PCB and overheat. He advised me to buy 4 green 5mm LEDs and solder them with long leads and it worked. Whole problem started when they moved production to China. Either Chinese manufacturing was sloppy or Cambridge Audio was sloppy by not providing mounting instructions or by poor design. It was long time ago but things like that should not happen especially when company knows about them. It could even damage my speakers. I would expect recall for that.

that is to say that Cambridge is an example that they can't get done anything perfect. if not one critical problem than the other critical one will reveal.
that is one of the reason why i've backed out from cambridge dacmagic

I've owned a 640 CD for several years and have had no issues.

I have a Cambridge Audio Azur 640C CDP, and after about 3 years the tray developed an intermittent (now constant) hitch that keeps it from loading properly unless you "help" it along, and not always even then. Luckily it's working this moment, feeding into an Audio-GD DAC and playing Wayne Shorter's newest, but I figure it'll be toast soon enough.

Had a Cambridge SS receiver and a tuner. Both developed problems. Have their phono preamp with no issues thus far. Their DAC magic was high on my list, did not want to chance it.

A lot of other brands to choose from, for myself CA won't be one of them.

My DACMagic and 640p phono pre have worked fine so far for years (both have upgraded power supplies...no clue if that makes any difference in longevity)...but after this thread I'll be keeping my eye on 'em...sneaky little bastards...they sit there and sound great until one day they BETRAY ME...damn...another thing to worry about...

Cambridge sells PILES of stuff so you have to wonder what percentage of it breaks...more than other large volume manufacturers? Less? Hard to say, although I'm guilty of being in the camp of avoiding things where people have complained about reliability (human nature I suppose)...Peachtree is a good example of that as some complaints reared up in a thread here. I talked to somebody at Audio Advisor about Cambridge DACs (wondered if the new DAC could use my power supply, "not yet" was the answer) and the guy told me the original DACMagic was their biggest selling item EVER. I wondered how many items that might have been, and now wonder where they went and are the owners happy with the things? I am, but maybe I'm a tin ear fool.

Thanks to all for your responses! It is clear to me now that I am not going to take my hard earned $$ and risk them on Cambridge products again.

I purchased a Cambridge Audio 640C CD Player in Christmas 2004 and used it daily for just about three years. It has since been placed into a secondary system and received very little use since. However, just today I've experienced issues. When I pop in CDs, it takes a couple seconds to read and then automatically ejects. This is for pressed, store-bought CDs (no CD-R material). I guess I'll have to chuck it soon.

Have had subs, AV amps and just now my CXA80 become an expensive doorstop. Have taken stuff to a pro repair guy in the past but CA don't help with specs and the parts are often not easy to access anyway.

Great sounding stuff when it works but my patience is running out