Cambridge Audio products unreliable/unsupported?

Update

The CAMBRIDGE AVR crapped out again a second time with catastrophic effect early in its 3rd year of operation.
The Cdn distributor said that the HDMI issue was somehow outside of the warranty coverage ....not a time issue but a "non-warranty" repair on my dime.
One week later their top. CAMBRIDGE bluray player suffered its own sudden catastrophic FUHBAR meltdown. It was 4 months after the 2 year warranty was up.
The cost to repair exceeded its FMV at that point.

I scrapped the bluray player, sold the AVR and went to an ARCAM FMJ bluray and went to high quality non-chifi separates instead of a chi-if AVR

'Nuff said

I have had 2 CA products. An 840 CD deck and (still have) an 840 preamp.

The 840 deck was reasonably reliable until the CD tray failed to retract into the deck on command from the remote. Still worked if manually nudged. Sold the unit soon after that, but the new user has had no problems with it.

My 840 preamp had the dreaded volume relay issue (they use an array of relays and discrete resistors to adjust volume). After a time period, the volume will suddenly jump up when adjusting up or down in level. The issue has been widely reported on the NET. My unit was no longer in warranty as I bought used, but CA was very responsive and sent me an entire set of replacement relays no charge. They are relatively easy to replace if you have de-soldering equipment. I did find, however, that the CA engineers had specified an incorrect part for this relay, because the relay manufacturer states the relay should be used intermittently only, and CA uses these "on" continuously.

The problem has not returned after the replacement, and I suspect the problem is aggravated by using the ramp volume mode where all the relays rattle as the volume is ramped up from a low level.

I owned threeCA products, the StreamMagic 6, the DACMagic Plus and the Azur 551r AVR, both purchased new. The DACMagic Plus and StreamMagic 6 worked flawlessly, the 551r blew some caps in the video subsystem after a year of operation.

I live in LA and since I purchased online, I took it to an authorized CA repair shop here (George Meyer). They fixed it under warranty with zero hassles. Sounded better than stock afterwards.

I would have no hesitation buying another CA product based on this experience.

This is not good and shouldn't be. Cambridge did build a reputation on designing good sounding gear for the price. I purchased a Cambridge phono preamp a few years ago, not only does it sound good but haven't had any issues at all with it. This sounds like the same problem NAD was experiencing with their new gear of being unreliable, the old stuff being much more reliable.

I had a CA Minx Xi Network Player. The software was buggy from day 1. Used it for barely 3 years and the it started producing only garbled noise instead of music. Now, out of warranty ,and months of email exchanges, CA support suggested a main board replacement.Only problem is the product is out of production and all i got is an apology from their support team. They said my unit cannot be resurrected.Below is the actual email.

Nicholas (Cambridge Audio)

Jan 30, 16:41 GMT

Hi Deepak,

I am sorry to hear that but if the parts are no longer available, there is no further action that can be taken to resurrect the unit.

Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience.

Kind Regards,

Nicholas

Technical Support Agent
Cambridge Audio