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Cambridge EXN100 STREAMING D/A PROCESSOR

Stereophile

|

April 2025

Each soloist seemed to pop out to the front, between the two speakers (of course), their life force emerging over decades, grooves, and digital bits.

- TOM FINE

Cambridge EXN100 STREAMING D/A PROCESSOR

The marriage of little streaming computers to DACs was at first a shotgun thing, a way to add Swiss Army knife capabilities at a price point. That was back when it was cutting-edge to have a NAS server full of digital files on the home network, and when commercial streaming was new, primitive, and lossy. Remember Pandora? Cool idea, but who wants to sit through ads and not be able to skip over more than a handful of disliked tunes every hour. Then Spotify came along. Then Apple and Amazon jumped in, and that's all she wrote. Eventually, streaming even got around to us audiophiles who desired lossless audio of at least CD resolution. Viva Qobuz!

Since streaming became the main mass medium for listening to music, a device that's just a DAC without an attached streamer seems uninteresting, and a poor value,' unless the streamer is a little USB gadget to drive headphones from a phone or computer.

Many hi-fi manufacturers seem to agree, since nowadays the market is flooded with streaming DACs of many sizes and shapes, and prices ranging from a couple hundred to tens of thousands of dollars. A sweet spot for build quality, features, and superb sound seems to be between $1500 and $2500. Scan the past two years of Stereophile, and you will find many streamer-DACs and streamerDAC-amplifiers in this price range. In this segment of the market, competition is fierce.

From England, a new contender

The EXN100 is Cambridge Audio's state-of-the-art streaming DAC.

It's half of the new EX line; the other half is the EXA100 integrated amplifier.

MEER VERHALEN VAN Stereophile

Stereophile

Stereophile

Doing it for themselves—and for us

Women have undeniably become the most dynamic and vital creative force in music today. Without their good energies and ideas, music, which in the digital age has become more background than art, would be much less interesting and inspiring.

time to read

3 mins

November 2025

Stereophile

Stereophile

15 FOR 50 1975 IN 15 RECORDS

WAS IT SOMETHING IN THE AIR, SOMETHING IN THE WATER? COSMICALLY INSPIRED BY THE STARS AND THE MOON? OR MAYBE THE DEVIL WAS FINALLY CLAIMING HIS OWN AS ROCK MUSIC IN ALL ITS VARIANTS WAS UNASSAILABLY ASCENDENT.

time to read

12 mins

November 2025

Stereophile

Stereophile

PrimaLuna EVO 300 Hybrid

These days, listeners the wide world over enjoy hearing their music recreated for them by equipment whose origins are international; trade isolationists might consider the example of PrimaLuna.

time to read

10 mins

October 2025

Stereophile

Stereophile

Bricasti Design M21

Those of us who review audio equipment, and even audiophiles who don't, often talk about our reference systems.

time to read

11 mins

October 2025

Stereophile

Stereophile

Pablo Records via Granz and Kassem

Way back in my ignorant youth I thought that Pablo Records, the label of jazz producer/promoter legend Norman Granz, was where jazz artists went to fade away, where they were put out to pasture.

time to read

3 mins

October 2025

Stereophile

Stereophile

Hi-fi for (very) small spaces

For the past few months, I've been getting ready to move. Those of you who've looked for an apartment in New York City know that it may be the single most dismal thing about living here.

time to read

12 mins

October 2025

Stereophile

RECOMMENDED RC2025 COMPONENTS

Every product listed here has been reviewed in Stereophile. Everything on the list, regardless of rating, is genuinely recommendable. Occasionally we get complaints from manufacturers who object to being included in, say, Class B. That's their error: Inclusion in Class B is a significant honor.

time to read

34 mins

October 2025

Stereophile

Stereophile

The Shanling ET3 CD transport

Costing just $899, Shanling's top-loading ET3 CD transport appears to have been designed by people who recognize the multitude of big and small fails (or lost opportunities) of previous CD transports. In use, the ET3 felt like a distillation of what I've always wanted in a transport: strong, solid, compact, cool-looking, and feels good to use. Everyone knows I like pro-audio cool with no froufrou. This Shanling deck looked so damn smart and felt so good to touch that it kept my mind repeating, \"Yep! That's how a CD transport should be built!\"

time to read

11 mins

October 2025

Stereophile

Stereophile

JOHN GIOLAS ASSUMES MARKETING LEADERSHIP AT CH PRECISION AND WATTSON AUDIO

Industry veteran John Giolas, global director of marketing for Swiss-based Wattson Audio since November 2024, has expanded his portfolio by also becoming global director of marketing for Wattson's parent company, CH Precision. The appointment, effective July 16, 2025, consolidates marketing strategy across both Swiss brands under Giolas's direction.

time to read

8 mins

October 2025

Stereophile

Stereophile

CH Precision C10

It takes audacity for a company that already builds one of the finest DACs on the planet, which is already expensive, to set out to build one that's so much better that it warrants an extra digit in the model number and a much higher price tag. But then CH Precision has never lacked audacity.

time to read

16 mins

October 2025

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