Hi, this is Brian from World Wide Stereo. In today's video, we're going to be
talking about the new Cambridge Audio all-in-one player, the EVO.
The EVO is available in two models, the 75 and the 150.
It's a high-quality hi-fi we've come to expect from Cambridge Audio.
Evolution means progress, evolution means improvement, evolution means transformation.
Now, let's talk about Cambridge Audio for a moment.
They launched in Cambridge, England, in 1968, and has remained focused on one encompassing
objective, to produce audio equipment that faithfully creates a pure and natural sound.
I had the pleasure to chat with one of their product specialists before I evaluated the EVO 75.
We talked about the history of the British sound, Cambridge's musical achievements
through the years.
And in our discussion, something that struck a chord with me was a statement,
"How much you love music doesn't need to equal how much money you have."
They think about the people that love music, and they want to make it easier for them to access it.
If you want to learn more about Cambridge Audio, check out their brand page on our site.
It features more in-depth information about their history and their current audio solutions.
When Cambridge Audio was developing the EVO series, they made the EVO 75 and the EVO 150,
75 is 75 watts per channel amplifier, the EVO 150 has 150 watt per channel amplifier.
The other differences between the 75 and the 150 is a couple inputs and the quality of pieces
put into it.
The EVO 150 has a better DAC, has more inputs, more digital inputs, more analog inputs.
But most importantly, it has a phono input so it has a moving magnet phono
stage built into it.
So, the EVO 150 is a little bit more of a versatile piece, but you're not short selling yourself if you're
going with the EVO 75.
On the back of the unit, it's going to tell you the story of the piece.
And, that's one of the things I like to look at because it really allows me to know what I can and
what I can't connect to it.
On this side, you have your inputs, and on this side, you're going to have your outputs.
It does have your speaker connections.
It has...are both coaxial inputs that you're going to be looking for, coaxial and Toslink or optical.
We have our good, old analog input.
So almost anything you want to throw at it, the analog can connect to.
Your turntable, your tape deck, your reel to reel, your old iPod, and anything that you want to listen
to, you can connect right there.
They wanted to make sure that you could connect it to your television, they added a
HDMI ARC connection.
The Cambridge Audio EVO 75 has a USB input, so you can connect a flash drive or portable USB
hard drive to, then, be able to play music directly from that drive onto the unit itself.
But the EVO 150 has an asynchronous USB input.
What that means is you can connect a computer to it to play high-resolution audio files.
There's an eighth-inch stereo input that says CD that is dedicated to a piece that Cambridge has
not made yet.
It's going to be an EVO CD player.
You're going to be able to control the unit with the front controls of the EVO and the remote.
Let's talk about our outputs.
So we have a sub out, which is awesome.
You know, if you don't have a set of speakers that are full range they need that low end for, it does
have a dedicated-subwoofer output.
If you wanted to use an ancillary amplifier, it has these analog audio pre-outs as well.
So Cambridge did a really good job with this display.
Super high-quality graphics, you can see it from across the room,
the big 6.8-inch, full-color display.
It has this little info button here that you can change the display to be just text, just the album artwork,
or a whole lot of information.
If you're caring about fidelity and you're caring about your source quality,
when you're listening to the Qobuz, it's telling me that I'm listening to a 96 kilohert, 24-bit FLAC file.
So you know the quality of your audio source, which I find to be important because it lets you
know, okay am I listening to the best version of this?
What you also have on the front end is going to tell you, you know, what your connections are.
So little icons over here will tell you, yes, I'm playing through my speakers.
They'll also show, yeah, we're connected on the Wi-Fi here.
Now, we have our physical buttons right next to the screen.
It's real simple, very rudimentary but it gets you all the pieces that you need to play around
with the unit.
So we have our power button on the bottom, we have a speaker selector.
The speaker selector is either going to allow you to play the speakers that you have connected to it
through the amplifier or your own amplifier connected to the pre-outs, or you can start
pressing it and you'll see, okay, I have my headphone, which is our input in the front here.
And, we also have some Bluetooth speaker that's connected as well.
So we can see all of our available outputs when we press the speaker button on the front.
If you do connect a pair of headphones into it, it will automatically switch over to the headphones
and cut off the speaker play.
A nice feature, I think, because it's one less thing that I have to do.
I always like one less thing that I have to do.
We have our info button like I pressed before that will allow you to switch through the screen itself.
Here's a nice helpful hint for you, if you press and hold that info button,
it's going to give you an options menu that allows you to dive deeper into the setup process, or you
can see where you can do a firmware update, you can adjust your networking settings,
they're kind of making it easy for you to jump in.
But, that's a little bit of a hidden gem that they have there.
Press the info button again, it goes back to that regular main screen.
Then you have your standard...your track back, your track forward, and
your all-important play/pause.
When you hit pause, gives you a nice, good indicator on the front of the screen that it is paused,
hit play, it'll jump right back into it.
Now, the dial on the right-hand side of the unit, the first part of it is going to be your volume, and
you can see your volume go up and down.
And, the nice part is if you do set the volume for your speakers at one level,
you can actually set your headphones at a higher level or different level.
So when you're listening from your headphone back to your speakers, you may be rocking out on your
headphones, but when you unplug them, you want to make sure that you're not, you know,
blowing up the room.
So the second dial on the unit allows you to sort through your sources.
So you can look and see all the different options that you have available to you for you to
play around with.
I did discover that they did not put a physical mute button on the front of the piece.
Now, the cure to that, top-left corner of the factory remote
you'll have the ability to mute the...
I also have that ability in the app itself.
But, all the buttons that appear on the front also appear on the remote.
Cambridge Audio did a really nice job of making this aesthetically pleasing as well as pleasing
to your ears.
They have these replaceable sides.
If you have a wood-themed room, you can have a wood-themed side, or if you're going a little bit more
modern aesthetic, you can have a nice, cool-black side as well.
Now be careful, the magnets are strong, they will stay, but if you don't move your finger
in time, you might pinch yourself.
One of the things I found while testing the EVO unit was whatever I wanted to throw at it, it could
handle, AirPlay 2, Chromecast, Tidal Connect, Spotify Connect, Bluetooth, digital connections,
USB connections, pretty much they wanted to make this the all-singing, all-dancing unit, because it can
do almost anything.
Most other components that you're looking at may do one and not the other.
So they were doing a really good job of making sure that whatever you wanted to listen to you had
the ability to listen to.
So if you do have an iPhone that has AirPlay 2, you have the ability to go straight into it.
If do have an Android phone that has Chromecast, you can go straight into it.
Hey, I love Spotify, has one of the biggest libraries out there,
not quite the quality that I'm always looking for, but it's easy to utilize a Spotify library
with the Cambridge Audio.
Now, what they wanted to do was focus on making sure that what you were listening to sounded
as best as possible.
So when you're listening to Tidal, they're going to push for the MQA track.
Now, the MQA is going to give you that ability to listen to the highest resolution up to the 24 bit,
192 kilohert master recording.
Now, when I talk about master recording, that means that it's been approved by either
the artist, the engineer, or the label to say, yes, this matches what we were listening to when
we were recording.
So that's a big thing.
What it also is able to do is a Qobuz stream.
Qobuz is another partner of ours that we love.
They can play up to a 24 bit, 192 kilohert audio stream as well.
But, you can also play through Cambridge Audio's dedicated StreamMagic app.
So if you had a bunch of Cambridge pieces and you want to, you know, enter this into the family,
it's controllable through that.
So you may ask yourself, "How did Brian evaluate the EVO 75?
Well, it was pretty simple.
I replaced my two-channel setup with the EVO 75.
So I used Spotify Connect, I used Tidal Connect, I used Qobuz, I used AirPlay, I used Bluetooth,
I used the TV ARC.
I really tried to use every little bit and piece of it.
They created a product that really allowed someone who wanted to listen to music,
the ability to listen to it easily.
But, they added the ability to listen to it well.
They added quality.
They wanted to make sure that whatever you were listening to was the best version of what you
wanted to listen to.
Thank you for joining me for our review of the Cambridge Audio EVO All-In-One Player.
You can learn more about our products on worldwidestereo.com or stop by our showrooms
in Montgomeryville or Ardmore, PA.
We offer 60-day returns, free shipping on all orders and we're authorized
dealers for everything that we sell.
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This is Brian from World Wide Stereo.
I'll see you next time.
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