Cambridge Audio 650BD mini review - Part 1 & 2

[Peter Larsen]

Just bought the Cambridge 650BD player, and here are my first impressions.

Part 1 - build, look and feel:

- Looks rather nice in its black aluminum finish. Strangely though the remote is in silver, and not in the same black aluminum design as the player itself.

- Build quality is very nice. Feels solid overall, and the black aluminum front makes it look more expensive than it really is (cost is 3500 danish kroner, thats approx. 430£). It has some very tall feet, looks a little funny.

- The disc drawer is a bit noisy going out - also a bit wobbly. However going in its much smoother and a lot less noisy. The machine itself makes a low whine (high pitch). I will test this when I spin my first movie, and get back to the subject in part 2.

- The display is okay, but you will not be able to watch the small info from a distance.

- The remote is well laid out, with only one strange feature that made me and the sales person scratch our heads until we found out how it worked. The audio and subtitle selection share a button. The first time you press it, you will be given the option to choose between whatever audio options is on the disc you are playing. Pressing it twice will give you the subtitle options ... now wait a minute ... no, that will not give you the subtitle options. For that you have to press and hold the button. Not a big problem, just seems strange to save a button.

- The players setup menu is very user friendly and pleasing to the eye. Supposedly it uses the same (Mediatek based) system as the Oppo BD-player, so people familiar with that will feel right at home. I like it a lot. It also has an info option (has its own button on the remote) that floats over your movie and tells you the current bitrate, audio and video codec and what have you. Very nice.

- Cambridge calls their player lightning fast, and boy are they right. I have never met a player this fast besides the Sony PS3. Thats mighty impressive. I didn't actually time it, but we tested The Dark Knight and from power on to the first menu on disc felt very fast. In less than a minute at least. Again I didn't time it.

Part 2 will be all about audio and video quality. Will test it with a Denon 1910 AVR and a Sanyo full HD projector at work.

 

[Messiah]

Nice review so far Peter!

I miss these in depth reviews......

 

[matthewpiano]

Very interesting to read. I'm looking forward to reading Part 2. Thanks.

 

[Peter Larsen]

Cambridge 650BD mini review - Part 2

Video and Audio:

I tested with two different movies last night. The 40th anniversary edition of 'The Italian Job' with Michael Caine (beautifully restored) and 'Wanted' with Angelina Jolie.

Remember, I'm not a professional reviewer, but this is what I found.

The player shows plenty of detail. It has a truly great color depth with very natural looking colors. Contrast is high, and the black level is truly remarkable.

Motion handling in slow and fast pans is very smooth - I would say perfect. The opening scene in 'The Italian Job' has a slow from from top to bottom pan which the player handled superbly. I was actually quite nervous as to how the player would handle this, as I have seen many players with a less than fluent approach to motion in pans. Great job Cambridge.

Audio

In a word; thunderous! A highly dynamic sound with plenty of detail, very clear dialog, very well defined bottom and great separation. I listened through hdmi and afterwards with a down mix to stereo via analog connections. The Stereo sound was great as well.

I would give it 5 stars.

NB. As promised in part 1. The machine is very quiet. We didn't hear it at all while watching our movies. It does make some funny servo sounds when its searching the disc, but playback is absolutely silent.

Oh, and it is fast! With Wanted in the player. Player turned of. Auto play on. It took 20 seconds from power on until the Universal logo flew across the screen. The player feels very fast.

Test equipment:

I used Miller & Kreisel surround speakers and sub at work. Very expensive system with great sonics. To drive the speakers I used Denons AVR 1910 (WH Award Winner). On a grey screen at approx. 120" I used a Sanyo full HD PLV-Z700 (WH award winner).

 

[Anonymous]

Peter Larsen:I used Miller & Kreisel surround speakers and sub at work. Very expensive system with great sonics

Out of interest which M&K speakers do you use as this is my next upgrade

 

[Peter Larsen]

They are mounted on the wall, so I could not see all the model numbers, but the sub is and MK V-1250 THX, and the surround speakers are MK Sur 550.

 

[Dave_]

Good work, very informative.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks! Really looking forward for this unit. Hope WHF reviews this unit very soon!

 

[Anonymous]

was the picture better than other blue ray players bearing in mind im only using a 42 inch philips

is it really worth it over the cheaps philips and sony models i ask because im buying a new player shortly which will stay in place until it fails tend not to swap av components at all

 

[Peter Larsen]

I haven't tried that many players. But in my opinion it is better than PS3, and Samsung BDP-1500. We have both players at work. Sound is better than the two and also better than the Sony BDP-S360 which we also have at work.

I forgot to mention that my player was region free on DVD out of the box.

I'm really happy with my purchase. The player looks great, works extremely well (fast) and has beautiful picture and sound quality.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Guys,

I Just got my order. A Cambridge Audio Azur 650BD.

I asked CA (Support View in Portugal) for an audition which took place on a CA distributor in Lisbon.

The Player did performed great and I was convinced to bring it with me.

At home, the player is doing just perfect, SACD, CD were just perfect, Blue-Ray as well and the DVD upscaling is as impressive as the DVD99 which I did liked a lot (I confirm DVD is region unlocked). It seams you're watching a Blue-ray movie with a just a little bit less detail and specially less color.

I can subscribe what was said here in this thread, but since the player is a full hand of qualities, let me talk about what's less good:

The USB ports (back and front) can recognize a lot of file types, but I just can't understand why it doesn't support NTFS file system. The problem is that, using FAT32 will only allow files up to 4GB, which is not enough for any High Defnition file... I honestly hope that CA will manage that in a future firmware.

Another less good aspect is the way DSD (SACD) is put out of the player. I would like to have the DSD bitstream through HDMI to the receiver but I don't understand why the analogue output ports aren't enabled when DSD is beeing bitstreamed. For the Analogue output ports to be enabled I must enter SETUP and change the SACD to PCM and then I stop haveing DSD on the HDMI... Can't understand the choice here. We should have a configuration for HDMI which wouldn't affect analogue outputs.

I Advise this player to everybody, ask your own audition.

See ya!

FM

 

[Anonymous]

Hi FM,

Thanks for the review, this is a player I'll be giving serious consideration to after the Oppo debacle, as the SACD setup is of great interest to me. There's something I'd like you to clarify for me fropm your review, as I'm puzzled. You seem to be stating that if DSD is enabled, and you're outputting via HDMI, the analogue outputs are disabled. Why is this a problem? If you're using HDMI, why would you need the analogues to be active as well, or am I missing something in what you're saying? Thanks very much.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Kaotician,

Imagine I have two amplifiers... one connected to the analogue output and another to the HDMI, this will work by activating the analogue Output... but in this case the HDMI will not output the DSD but a LPCM signal 88KHz. I was expecting both output would be activated simultaneously like the OPPO says it does 🙂

By the way, as the time goes by I really prefer the analogue outputs using the DAC's from the 650BD than the DAC Conversion of my Yamaha 663.

Cya

FM

 

[Anonymous]

Hey -

I've got the CA 640R & CA DVD99. In my research with a similar issue I found that the HDMI would not carry the SACD signal allegedly due to copyright/pirating concerns. Yet the optical and digital coax work. I think the analog outs are they way to go with SACD.

Now, to add the 650BD to my stable.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I have just today met with this Blueray player. It very much reminds me of Oppo BD83. In fact, there is one important difference. It doesnt support mkv files from USB disk. I wonder if this could be changed by an firmawre updade soon. What do you think? Thanks.

 

[Anonymous]

This is what I have found at their Q&A. So it should support mkv files play back...but it is not really clear and reliable. Any experience, please?

The 650BD supports the following video formats; MPEG2, MPEG2 HD, MPEG4, MPEG4 AVC, VC-1, XviD, WMV, WMV HD, VCD, AVCHD, MPEG ISO, JPEG

For downloaded/copied/etc video files, we can also say that the 650BD supports AVI and MKV files and we certainly intend to continue to support them.

However we would advise you not to convert all your files. You should copy them and convert only the copies.
It is obviously essential to always have a backup in case of problems and we are not liable for consequential damage.

In terms of support we keep archived copies of all firmware so if there were some major reason why the machine could not support AVI or MKV in the future we could make available to you an earlier firmware (such as the present one) that does support them.

You should also test a few of your files on the machine to make sure you are happy with the performance and file support.

This is a very fast moving area and we have seen changes in BD disc authoring for instance already that make guaranteeing any particular file or format playability difficult.