REVIEW
34
HI-FI WORLD
JUNE 2010
www.hi-fiworld.co.uk
W
ithin a very short
time of receiving this
Blu-ray player I was
enjoying the won-
derfully smooth and
lush sound of strings
of the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra
swelling up behind Lang Lang, play-
ing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto
No2 – on SACD! The new 650BD
reviewed here is one of the first
‘universal’ players to become avail-
able to Britons, able to play not just
Blu-ray discs of all varieties, but also
SACDs, DVD-As and CDs, no less.
The 650BD will play
all
audio discs
except LPs, making Cambridge fast
off the mark in getting out a player
to rival the Oppos we mention so
often, sadly available only in U.S. Blu-
ray Region A form. The Cambridge
comes in UK and U.S. versions.
This is a sophisticated player
and, being from a dedicated audio
manufacturer, has been purposed to
do a good job with every silver audio
disc ever conceived as a commercial
format. It also plays Blu-ray movies of
course, and DVD movies, upscaling
them to Blu-ray resolution, to
improve picture quality. To be crystal
clear though, the difference between
this Blu-ray player and most others
you’ll encounter lies in its ability to
play SACD and DVD-A, since even
budget models from Samsung and
Philips will play CD and DVD video,
as well as Blu-ray, but not these
‘obsolete’ formats. To date Blu-ray
has been seen as an AV format, all
about movies; only Oppo have made
an issue of audio quality – and their
players have become very popular
largely as a result. I have been
hankering after Oppo’s BDP-83 as a
one-box do-it-all machine, but instead
Cambridge Audio’s 650BD arrived at
our offices and turned out to be a
near equivalent – a pleasant surprise!
Audio buffs would sneer at using
a player like this as a stand alone CD
player within a hi-fi system, but you
can
use it as a decent CD transport,
connected via S/PDIF to a DAC, or
HDMI to an AV receiver, because
our measurements show it has very
low jitter. However, Blu-ray players
like this are really purposed for use
with an AV receiver and Cambridge
Audio recommend their new 650R,
but I used a Marantz SR8002 7.1
receiver in what is effectively a
stereo hi-fi system driving World
Audio Design KLS9 loudspeakers
for the front stage, plus Usher S-
520s as Surrounds, in a 4.0 system
deliberately devoid of subwoofer
(don’t like ‘em!) and Centre
‘speaker (great if you like mono).
I do occasionally hook in Back
loudspeakers behind the listening
position but they contribute little
for music purposes. Most surround-
sound music discs use the rear
Surround loudspeakers for ambience,
so do little work.
A system like this does a fine job
with pure audio discs like CD, SACD,
etc, and also with Blu-ray and DVD
music videos, as well as with movies,
although it isn’t purposed for massive
explosions. The new Cambridge
player can handle all of these discs, in
most of the flavours they come in.
Trying to understand what a
player like this offers is easiest if split
into roles. It can be connected up
simply using phono cables, because
it has ‘traditional’ analogue outputs,
in the form of phono sockets.
There’s a full set of eight (Front L&R,
Centre, Surround L&R, Back L&R,
Subwoofer) to feed an (old) receiver
having analogue inputs only. With a
player of this quality the HDMI digital
multichannel link should be used
in preference to analogue cables,
but Cambridge provide a full set of
phono outputs all the same, to aid
compatibility with a wide range of
older products out there. They also
provide an internal, user selectable
Blu Order
Establishing itself at the top of the budget Blu ray tree, Noel Keywood shows true faith in
Cambridge Audio's new 650BD...
