Home > Consumer Reviews > Cambridge Audio Azur 840C CD Player -silver

Let me give you first some background information. I am an audiophile (or aspiring one if your prefer) on a budget and I have owned several brands of players since the creation of the format (JVC, Technics, Sony ES) until 1992 where I found about the Pioneer Elite PD-65 (Stable Platter Technology), This player was so good in comparison to others that I have owned or auditioned before (At my local Sound Advice in Miami) that it stayed with me until a few months ago, so we are talking roughly 15 years plus a few months. During this time, as technologies, were advancing I auditioned other units but I always came back to my faithful PD-65. Again at the end of 2007 I came into serious "upgrade mode" and the reading of several reviews drove me to a Marantz SACD/CD Player (in Stereophile's current recommended component list) and survived with it a few months in a love/hate relationship, -Love- because when it got it right the sound was wonderful, even better than the PD-65 and -Hate- because sometimes it refused to play a few titles (The PD NEVER did) and ultimately I read so very good reviews of playback of plain Red Book discs with this unit that I had very high expectation of what to expect with the playing of poor recordings (let's be honest a lot of CDs out there sound terrible) but they still sound bad. As we all know "Garbage in, Garbage out".
So I started looking again and came into the Cambridge Audio 840C which was well beyond my budget but I jumped and I don't regret the decision. This player is simply fabulous, I have it connected with balanced cables (XLR) to my Adcom Pre-amp and GFA-5800 Amplifier. Maybe it is synergy, maybe just plain good luck but for the first time (at least for me) I can hear "silence" and that makes every single sound listenable in a way I could not hear before and to top it off I recover a lost appreciation of my music collection (including poor recordings that now are listenable).
As any advice you can take this with a grain of salt but this is my personal experience and I can not find exact words to describe the excitement of owning a player that finally delivers and that have made my music alive again. I know that a lot of people might say.. "You have not auditioned brand XYZ which sounds way better than the 840" to what I will simply respond that my opinion is based in the brands that I mentioned and a few others that I had the chance to listen to over the years.
Thank you for your time reading this.

Fantastic player, you'll have to spend much more to find something better. That said, it can be found MUCH cheaper elsewhere.