Sound Quality, Detailed reproduction, wonderfully accurate and warm

remote, instruction manual??? (uh... what were they thinking?), not able to dim front LED

Ok, let’s start off with this: what is your goal for your next AVR? Do you want one with the most features and bells and whistles and lose a bit of the soundstage/clarity of signal? OR… Do you want the best sound quality for the price? If you answered yes to the 1st question, you can stop here. If the second question resembles your goal, read on. I am running 2 Paradigm Studio 100’s with this AVR. I demoed the Yamaha RXV1500, RXV2500, and the Denon 3805 along side the Cambridge before making a decision. In summary, the Denon 3805 come in a distant last place behind this group. If I had solely listened to the Paradigm Studio 100’s being pushed only by this receiver, I would not have bought them. The highs are tinny, cheap sounding, and in some cases, muffled. I thought there was something wrong with the unit, so I asked if they could swap it out with a second one, break it in and call me to re-demo it… same results. The Denon has a nice remote, but gee whiz, I was disappointed. Onto the Yamahas. The Yamaha sound was very rich. The performance of the Yamaha set my ear-taste-buds off to drool for a while. And then… YPAO happened. I was looking at buying 5 speakers, and a sub, so we set the YPAO up to run and when we returned to the room, the sound characteristics DRAMATICALLY changed. The Yamaha went from a seriously amazing sounding unit (yes, both the 1500 and 2500) to a dead, lifeless, black and white sound. I had to turn the volume WAY up in order to get the Yamaha to sing for me after the YPAO incident. I asked if a fix was attainable, and was advised by the Salesperson and the service department that Yamaha currently did not have a fix available. So, if I was going to buy this one, I would have to be careful NOT to touch the YPAO… unacceptable hazard for me. Finally, the Cambridge was fired up. At first glance, I was skeptical that such a small, uncomplicated unit could reproduce anything which would be considered inspiring. Thankfully, I was SOOOO wrong. The Cambridge was so natural sounding. There were no clicks or ticks as noted in other reviews. In 2 channel mode, the Cambridge seemed to soak the Studio’s with sweet juice and then POW… horns were simply amazing, non-fatiguing, beautiful… Strings… what an amazing imaging capability. The Cambridge was beyond beauty in its simplicity. Whatever was recorded was reproduced flawlessly and without additions or subtractions in the sound. It is a wonderful component to start with in purchasing the Studio 100’s. The 100wpc in 2 ch mode is a true rating, and the 80wpc in 6.1 is also an accurate measurement. Distortion was not detected, at any volume. I got goosebumps from being able to hear detail after detail in the original, natural recordings I was playing. Thank you Cambridge Audio for this wonderfully simple, elegant sounding, well made product. Simplicity, purity, beautifully natural. The Cambridge has less features, sound formats, and less of the clutter one can encounter in a remote… it also has less room for critique in sound quality. I would have expected to pay a significant amount more for a unit like this.

Similar Products Used:

Denon 3805, Yamaha RXV2500/1500, Paradigm Studio 100's

Finally I have found an A/V Receiver that meets my criteria. I have tried a lot of different receivers in the past few months. HK, NAD, Denon, but the CA 540R has excelled above them all. There are a few quirks related to its operation noted in the other reviews, but the sound is pheonominal for the price. The ability to play music with richness and depth coupled with the power, punch and clarity required for Home Theatre is almost impossible to find until now. I highly and without reservation recommend this unit.

Similar Products Used:

NAD 742, HK DVR1005, Denon 2803, Sony STRV 785

Musicality, naturality, good soundstage, good in stereo, essentiality, good power and dynamic

none

What a wonderful little receiver, a jewel! Great musicality, rich and warm sound, good dynamic, genuine 80 Watts power. Nice performance also as a stereo integrated: it fairly compares to my Bryston integrated, which is supposed to cost 6 times more (for which you pay only the 2 channel amplification, while the Cambridge price includes 6.1 channels, tuner and digital decoders). It is musically very delicate and very sweet, tough it has plenty of power and can drive my Monitor Audio with great ease and naturality, even at high sound pressures and with big orchestral masses. Really really stunning for an a/v receiver: I did not expect something like that. Matbe, the only parameter in which the Bryston wins against the Cambridge is the soundstage: Cambridge's soundstage is great, but Bryston is truly marvellous. Anyway, I'm sure the 540R is better in stereo than my previous "high-end" Electrocompaniet. The 540R has equally awesome performance for home cinema purposes: a very natural, clean, voice, warm and beautifully spatialised, and very good dynamic. Never harsch neither sleepy. Exceptionally good also for multichannel high definition music: I have a bunch of dvd-audio and it is a really great listening. Construction is very rational and well done. Very elegant the look. None of the bugs that some users referred: no hum or clics at all, excellent preamplification. The philosophy is minimal, so it is pure (and so great) value for every cent you pay it: pure performance, pure music, pure joy. Purchasing this unit, you don't waste your money with 3 dozens of childish DSP or obscure (and nearlu unused) new digital decodings. It has just the reasonable decodings and fair amount of controls. But the big part of budget is fucused in music and good sound. A steal at this price! Also excellent with home cinema

Similar Products Used:

Bryston B60 Electrocompaniet ECI-3 AMC 2445

Warmth for tunes, ease of use, understated but useful display by todays standards. Can easily do everything without a remote . Minimum of setup. Love the size. Can't beat the price/performance, definitely worth a listen even if you are shopping in the 800-1200$ range - I was. Power seems very clean and graduates evenly to plenty loud. Core effects work for me, haven't even had to touch the levels to equalize the room - non-trivial for me!

Effects good for me, might be a little weak for some and not as tweakable as other units. Input selection/mode could have simply been a single knob. Not much bass management (expected) but I've a controller with filters for that anyway (the servo-15 can break things!). Lack of A/B for some... Have had to fuss just a bit more then I like to get Theatre style sounds dialed in on the center channel. Tuner? we'll that's what satelite is for anyway.

This really hit a sweet spot for me. I'm more into the easy of use, strong audio, listenability side of things. Used to be a bit of an audio enthusiast so I was shopping for something that can cope with a bit of a discerning ear. It also had to drive Paradigm Reference 40s with ease and deliver clean bass to Paradigm Servo-15 sub and have some semblance of imaging. This in a large room with high ceilings no less. So far it really does the trick. I'm way impressed with how even it is at low listening levels or quiet passages to gettin' a bit rowdy with say, some John Mooney. Plenty of outs for me and it's handling all my high end connectors with ease. By the time I bought they'd updated the chips, so I haven't run into what others have. I'm COAX and really haven't noticed any clicking. It's still worth Googling the issues some have had to be an informed buyer, good thread at http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/1/27401.html

Similar Products Used:

Mid range yamahaha (cold/flat to my ear, Mrs. liked it though), Pioneer Elite (pretty nice, worth a listen), Carver (blew it up), bi-amped GAS Godzilla amps with other seperates (neighborhood revolted)

-Lovely warm/rich sound. -Able to reach very loud volumes (in small to moderate sized rooms) without distortion. -Well built and damped chassis. -Classy remote control -full set of pre-outs (enabling the addition of seperate power amps) - not loaded to the gunnels with all those DSP modes (total waste of time IMO)

Ah, now the bad news. Unfortunately the 540r despite being made in China displays the old british engineering flaws i.e operational foibles, for instance: - If using the digital input for dvds (as 99% of people do) there is a click heard through the speakers when FBI copyright crap comes onscreen. The same occurs when the menu is loaded. - Skip chapters on a dvd and the first second or so of audio is missing. This seems to happen on every dvd I've tried. This same problem occurs if listening to some cd's via the digital input. I say "some cd's" because it varies from disc to disc - some have the audio dropout and others don't. - When you turn the amp off and on again the volume returns to a preset level, rather than where you left it. - The owners manual is an absolute waste of time, and of no assistance to setting up the receiver. More a promotional catalogue than anything else. - Not 7.1 or as flexible with video inputs/outputs, but these are irrelevant to the way my system is set up.

After a couple of years with a Sony str db940 decided to shop around for something a bit warmer sounding. The Sony was good at low to moderate volumes but crank it up and it would fall to pieces, the treble becoming 'fingernails on the blackboard' material. Demo'ed both the Denon 1603 and 1803. Definitely smoother sounding than the Sony but again both distorted badly when you crank the sound up (and I'm not talking party loud levels here). Better, but not worth the money ($1100 NZD for the 1803 with a $200 discount) I have a Cambridge Audio dvd 300 (a somewhat quirky but excellent dvd player) so decided to trial the 540R. Boy I'm sure glad I did. The sound this thing produces for the money is simply outstanding. Crystal clear and warm sound with music and movies. Dialogue is easily understood even at low volumes. I have a 5 by 5 metre room and the 540r is easily able to reach house shaking levels. Just looking at the small size of the receiver you wouldn't expect much in the sound level department, but believe me, for small to moderate rooms, it'll go plenty loud enough. Effects seem to whizz around the room a little bit quicker than my Sony too. In general the sound is just more lifelike than any other av receiver at it's price. Despite the problems listed below I bought the receiver. The sound is just so darned good!

excellent sound fairly easy to use banana plug compatible

worthless instruction manual silver lettering on silver panel can't handle spade connections remote control is not 'universal'

I just purchased this receiver along with the matching 540D dvd player within the past week, but I thought I'd give my first impressions.. I own other Cambridge Audio stereo components (D500 cd player and C500 preamp) so I had high expectations for build and sound quality.. the new Azur line did not disappoint in those regards before ordering the Azur products sight unseen, I spent a few days checking out the competition in other electronics stores.. I was impressed by Denon and Marantz, but felt they were a bit pricey and generic looking.. I was turned off by Rotel and Harman Kardon because they were flimsy and made out of plastic.. the Sony Elite lineup was great but way overpriced.. Integra (made by Onkyo) seemed to be good, but looked too 'japanese' and sounded like it.. a bit too bright.. NAD was ok, but the salesman said it could be a bit finicky, particularly with their dvd player.. lastly, I hoped to see some decent Pioneer equipment, but for some reason nobody carried it locally, so that was forgotten as soon as I checked out the Azur products online anyway, on to Cambridge Audio... I ordered it Monday morning from Massachussetts, and it arrived Thursday morning at my office in Wisconsin.. the first thing I noticed is how nicely the boxes are designed.. they're made to be resealable and have plastic carrying handles built in.. a far cry from a cardboard box.. this is the attention to detail that CA puts into their thought process (usually, that is) I took the boxes home and pulled out the 540R, and removed the cloth sack it was enclosed in (no plastic bags here).. it was very nice and heavy.. with a solid metal faceplate and nice balance.. the remote control (more on that later) was also wrapped in a cloth sack and felt very nice in the hand.. it's faceplate is also metal and gives a nice reassuring impression of quality.. the 540D dvd player was similar after running the system for a day while I was out of town, I came back to check it out.. very impressive sound from an A/V system.. warm, but not dull.. setting up the sound levels for each speaker is very easy.. in fact setting up just about everything is very easy.. and this is important because the instruction manual is completely worthless.. it's essentially a checklist of product features, but gives no explanation what they are or when to use them.. the good news is that it's printed in about 6 different languages.. so you can brush up on your french, italian, spanish, etc oh, before I go on, I should explain that I bought the silver model.. and the lettering on it is all in silver, too.. kinda cool since it keeps the face looking very clean.. but makes it VERY difficult to read the inputs and outputs while hooking it up.. I had to use a flashlight in the middle of a bright room just to hook up the speaker wires.. this is in contrast to the rear panel labels on my older cd player and preamp that are clearly legible and printed upside down so you can read them properly while looking down at the back of the unit (as 95% of us do).. why did CA change a good thing? I'm very pleased with this unit and I'm sure I made the right choice in buying it.. but it has some minor annoyances.... the remote control is not universal.. that is, it only operates the receiver.. not even any other CA equipment.. this is a real pain because the remote for the 540D dvd player looks almost exactly the same, and neither are labelled.. I have to look at the labels on the buttons to figure out which to use the mute button on the remote is right between the UP and DOWN volume buttons.. so I hit the mute button frequently while adjusting the sound the volume knob on the receiver is not linear.. you have to turn it 50 times to adjust the sound 10 decibles, it seems the front a/v inputs are covered by a cheap plastic piece that looks horrible.. I removed it as I would rather see the input jacks themselves the blue characters on the LCD panel are very bright.. not what I'd choose for a dark room while watching movies or listening to music.. a dimming feature would be nice here the speaker inputs on the back will take banana plugs but not spades well, that's about it.. I seems like I have a lot of complaints, but I really like the receiver.. it works very well, and once you get it set up and are familiar with it, few of the weaknesses I mentioned will be an issue since they are mostly superficial.. I consider it an excellent value regarding sound and build quality.. I expect to be using it happily many years from now normally I hate people who write reviews about equipment and get picky about things that don't affect the sound quality and primary function, but I couldn't give this unit an overall 5-star rating since CA put more thought into the retail box than remote control integration with other components, and because the volume knob should work better/quicker (at least in my opinion).. but as far as sound quality and build materials, no fears.. it rules!

Similar Products Used:

Denon, Marantz, Rotel, H&K, Sony

Not overly big or heavy but very solid and well put together. Great steering, precise and warm.

One more digital input would have been nice but I'm nit-picking.

Finally bought a proper DTS DD receiver after using a 2 channel receiver with Fosgate processor for way too long. Difference is amazing but not just between the two, also between Yamaha and Onkyo in the same price range. Higher current is very important. Very warm sound - detailed and even my old Integra 3-head tape deck sounds much better. Very happy with this unit and matched with the fairly quirky DVD300, kicks butt. Very clean sound. For the bucks, you can't beat it. Class act.

Similar Products Used:

Yamaha, Onkyo and Denon.