INSIDER
CAMBRIDGE AUDIO EVO:
“I CAN ACCEPT ‘LIFEST YLE’, BUT THIS IS A PROPER HI-FI PRODUCT”
Taking on the just-add-speakers streaming system market
As much as we love it, hi-fi isn’t traditionally synonymous with convenience – those stacks of components and tangles of cables, the rigmarole around turntable assembly, the nuisance caused by being repeatedly bitten by the hi-fi upgrade bug.
Aiming to bring the two closer is a new era of just-add-speakers streaming systems. In recent years, electronics brands have combined music streamers and amplifiers into do-all boxes to make the prospect of ‘hi-fi sound’ less daunting and more domestically attractive, to both the hi-fi and wider community. With such versatile streaming boxes, you could say the microsystem has come of age.
Having established itself in both areas of audio expertise, Cambridge Audio has now entered the market – with its Evo 75 and Evo 150. We sat down with the firm’s managing director, Stuart George, to talk about its approach to creating something that straddles hi-fi and lifestyle design; something that by its very nature should be relevant to a bigger audience than its dedicated separates.
Looking over the edge
It all started with Edge, Cambridge’s flagship hi-fi series introduced in 2018. “When we launched Edge, one of the biggest requests was ‘why didn’t you put a streaming module in the Edge A amplifier?’ And that was part of the inspiration for the Evo. Before then, our thoughts were that an all-in-one product had to include a CD player. Evo was never intended to be a ‘mini Edge’, but our concept was to try to get all the qualities of Edge into a smaller form.”