Cambridge Audio CXN review

Some might feel that Hi-Fi separates are a 20th-century way to listen to music, but Cambridge Audio’s CXN is about as modern as it gets. It’s a gorgeously designed hi-fi separate with all the wired and wireless connections you’d need to stream digital music from any device, including high-resolution FLAC files.

With a sleek silver brushed metal finish (it’s also available in black, if that’s the colour of your existing separates) and a 4.3in colour screen dominating the front panel, the CXN looks far simpler than the pre-amps, CD players and DACs it’s likely to sit on. The screen demands attention, displaying album art in full colour; while viewing angles and colour saturation aren’t the best we’ve seen, it’s still a massive improvement over the mono displays other media players use.

The menus are sensibly labelled and the screen has a high enough resolution that it’s easy to read from across the room. The backlight can be dimmed or turned off completely if you find it distracting, but as it displays album art prominently we preferred to leave it switched on to help us work out what was playing when using shuffle.

There’s no internal hard disk for storing your music library locally, but as long as you have a PC or NAS device on your network you’ll be able to stream files via the wired or wireless connections. Wi-Fi is included in the form of a dongle, rather than an integrated antenna, potentially so Cambridge Audio can upgrade the technology at a later date.

Unfortunately, there’s no built-in Bluetooth – you have to buy the BT100 dongle separately, which feels like penny-pinching at this price. Bluetooth audio quality might not meet the expectations of anyone with a library of Hi-Res audio files, but it’s still useful for streaming the odd podcast from your phone. If you have an Apple device you can always use AirPlay streaming instead.

You can also connect a PC to the USB port to use it as an external sound card, or use the multiple digital and analogue inputs on the rear. Cleverly, all the labels are written upside down as well as right side up, so you can read them easily when leaning over the top of the unit to wire it up. As there’s a digital pre-amp on board, you could connect a set of powered speakers and start playing music right away, but we tested with a separate amplifier and a pair of passive speakers.

Either way, controlling the CXN was a breeze, thanks to the intuitive menus, oversized control knob on the front and comprehensive remote control. The excellent Cambridge Connect smartphone app is even better, as it lets you stream local music from your device over Wi-Fi, queue up tracks from networked servers or PCs, and browse any USB flash drives connected to the unit. The app also lets you choose from a number of internet radio stations, and the CXN connects directly to each station for playback rather than streaming them through your phone.

Spotify Connect and Airplay are on hand for convenient streaming without an accompanying app, although we have to say that songs streamed from Airplay didn’t have the punch and vibrancy of tracks played directly from a USB flash drive. The CXN apparently upsamples every input to 24-bit/384kHz quality before passing the digital signal through two Wolfson WM8740 DACs, but, as expected, we could still tell the difference between a low-quality MP3 and a lossless FLAC file.

Although sound quality will vary depending on the other components in your setup, and the speakers you pair it with, the CXN sounded sublime throughout our testing. With a pair of Cambridge Aeromax 2 passive speakers, powered by a CXA60 amplifier, it produced crystal clear music from all genres. Lossless FLAC files sounded delightfully rich and detailed, bringing out the sounds of singers breathing and fingers sliding down the fretboard in Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. Even Spotify tracks sounded impressive, with Spotify Connect support meaning we didn’t have to leave our phone next to the unit to continue playback.

At £700, the CXN is undeniably expensive, especially when you need to pair it with a set of powered speakers (at the bare minimum) before you can use it to stream music. If you’re already set up with some separates you’d like to bring into the 21st century, however, it’s an excellent upgrade that will slot into an existing Hi-Fi setup. It could also be the focal point of a more simplified system, thanks to that eye-catching colour display. The lack of Bluetooth is irritating for Android owners, and AirPlay doesn’t sound as good as streaming from a PC or NAS, but otherwise the CXN is a one-stop shop for discerning music fans.