Triggered by no particular reason besides version madness, I bumped my streaming unit from Cambridge CXN v1 to Cambridge CXN v2. Cambridge V1 sounded great, and I could often listen to the music without noticing what I was hearing was being streamed. In hindsight, it was somewhat silly to spend money on an upgrade, given so little, as Cambridge states at their support site: “There are no major spec differences between these releases. Instead, this was a cosmetic change.”. So this blog post could have ended with >>Don’t fix what isn’t broken<<, but it will not, as I detected slight differences, which in my views might not justify the cost of the upgrade but sets the versions apart.

The CXN V2 is Cambridge’s next-gen streamer, featuring dual 24-bit Wolfson WM8740 DACs, a ‘bit-perfect’ signal path, and jitter suppression. Connected via RS45, it delivers a stunning 24-bit/384 kHz quality with clean, warm tones that, in short, sound absolutely fucking amazing. When I was testing it on Tin Pan Alley it became noticeable that nuances in the guitar tone, distortion, and effects had richer characters. And the vocal sounded more natural with an enhanced sense of spaciousness. Besides this, a slightly better screen, and different layout, the boot speed of the device is the most noticeable, I guess its more true than ever; To improve on something that’s already pretty good, sometimes all you need is a light touch.