The Right Stuff

CAMBRIDGE AUDIO AXR100 STEREO RECEIVER

- Daniel Kumin

THEY STILL make stereo receivers? Who knew! But seriously, folks—I’m here all week. Stale humor aside, there will always be a sure market for high-quality audio playback, with access to terrestrial broadcast radio, AKA good old FM, and a basic feature set for hooking up outboard components. And Cambridge Audio’s AXR100 is one of a small but growing cadre of current-day stereo receivers aiming to satisfy it.

British stalwart Cambridge Audio—that’s Cambridge as in punting on the Cam, not duck boats on the Charles—has a well-earned reputation for judiciously balancing audiophile desires with the imperatives of value, an equation to which the AXR100 seems well-targeted. Its 100-watts-per-channel amplifier is supplied by an impressively solid power supply, including a substantial toroidal transformer, something not always seen at this entry-ish level. Also of note is onboard digital-to-analog-conversion, in this case a 24-bit/192-kHz circuit served by optical and coaxial digital inputs, but lacking the USB type-B port you’d need to connect a laptop or other computer source directly. I frankly found this omission to be surprising, given that hi-res streaming is the audio “it” of the moment, and streaming directly from a connected laptop is the easiest and cheapest way to get on board. (Surprised, that is, until I poked around the agora a bit, where I found that none of the other under-$1,000 stereo receivers, regardless of brand or country of origin, includes this all-important input, either.)