Cambridge Audio and Wharfedale

Sometime in 2000, we began to yearn for a real music system; we were unable to continue pretending that the Akai boombox was producing what we could call music. We wondered whether we could get the modern equivalent of a component system for fifty thousand rupees. We wanted "separates": a separate CD player, a separate amp, and speakers with wood-finished exteriors and weight more than 200 grams. Would such a system fit our budget?

We selected four or five CDs from our collection, and selected specific tracks in each. We put these CDs in a plastic bag, and took them around with us when we went from dealer to dealer, trying out these CDs. Sometimes we went back to the same dealer a few times, trying out various speakers or amps. We spent about four months doing this, starting August 2000. And we discovered interesting things about the Indian "high-end" audio market, as manifested in the small handful of dealers in Bombay.

We visited a small shop opposite Heera-Panna Shopping Centre in Haji Ali. They said that they did not have any amp or other components in stock, but would be happy to obtain any model and make we wanted, from abroad, once we placed an order. They showed us amps they were in the process of packing and sending off to customers --- a new consignment had arrived. I remember Yamaha amps. So this was how a section of the high-end market worked. Customers were expected to be well-travelled, or well-read in the trade rags of the audio industry, and were expected to come into this shop and simply identify the exact make and model they wanted. It would be "imported" from Singapore, bypassing Customs duties, and delivered to the customer in a week or two. This "importing" was in the form of a purchase from a retailer in Sim Lim Square of Singapore or some similar mall, so end-user prices in Bombay were about 20% higher than Singapore retail prices. They still are.

We visited Sound Out, a shop inside the Heera Panna Shopping Centre, well known as a grey market dealer of audio equipment. (Once upon a time, Heera Panna was a large collection of grey market dealers in foreign goods of all kinds.) We saw some PSB Alpha speakers, some small bookshelf models from the Wharfedale Pacific series, and a few amps and CD players. We asked them whether they had any other model in stock; the shopkeeper was not even interested in discussing anything with us. He made it plain: we had to choose from what he had. He could not discuss anything about any other model, nor could he tell us anything about the availability of any other piece. We decided to give Walk Out of Sound Out.

We also went to Lakozy, opposite Chowpatty beach, and to J&B Sound, in a small lane off Linking Road, and listened to a lot of systems there. And we discovered that people buy audio systems costing upward of a lakh of rupees (USD 2000, roughly) without listening carefully to them before picking them up. We became oddballs, constantly trying to listen to the systems, though the shops cheerfully played our CDs on system after system patiently.

We also discovered this new thing called "home theater", which added speakers and cost, but not sound quality. And everyone was buying "home theater" systems because they all appeared convinced that five speakers had to be better than two. The rate at which Yamaha home theater receivers were selling was not funny --- even expensive systems, costing upward of five lakh rupees (USD 10,000) were selling at the rate of two per week at one or two dealers'.

We also discovered that all the key dealers of "high-end" audio in Bombay vilified each other, called each other names in private, and in general tried to tell all their customers how ignorant and unethical their rivals were. They would tell me stories like "Oh, he doesn't even know how to set up a system --- he called me and requested me to set up his own showroom systems for him."

After four months of listening and thinking, we decided that we would select speakers between Monitor Audio Bronze series floorstanders and Wharfedale Pacific Pi-40 floorstanders. The speakers alone took us to the top of our budget, leaving no room for amps. We decided to opt for the Wharfedales --- the Monitor Audio speakers sounded harsher, more etched, somehow. Other speakers we heard (Definitive, Infinity, Yamaha) didn't impress us, and the Jamo D570 and D590, which sounded better than any of the others, were twice as expensive as the Wharfedales.

For the amp, we first had to take stock of our finances and ensure that there was money left over after the speaker, to let us buy any amp at all. We managed it, by encashing some fixed deposits. I was getting petrified looking at the mounting total -- my wife was very encouraging and quite unfazed. We had initially thought that we would buy a Marantz 6010 OSE amp, but after listening to this new, totally unknown brand of amp called Cambridge Audio at J&B Sound, we heard an amazing degree of difference. It was as if the Marantz amp was damping down a lot of the frequencies in a wide midrange band --- we couldn't even hear the tanpura in one track properly, which was so clear and smooth on the Cambridge Audio amp. If anyone ever tells you solid state amps playing at low volume have no audible differences, do not believe him. We had one advantage for comparisons at that time; we had chosen our speakers, and those were standing in the same showroom. So we could compare amps using a specific set of known speakers and a specific CD player. We were really impressed by the Cambridge Audio's sound, and we decided to pick it up, even though it was more than 50% costlier than the Marantz 6010 OSE.

So, without having planned for so much investment, we now became owners of a pair of Wharfedale Pacific Pi-40 speakers and a pre+power amp combo, the C500 and P500 from Cambridge Audio.

We really didn't have any money left for a source. So we thought we would just get amp+speakers home with us for now, and buy a small tape player later, to act as source, till we found the money to buy something better to play CDs or tapes with. But seeing our plight, Jacob Koshy of J&B Audio threw in a shop-demo CD player (the Yamaha CDX-396) at a price we couldn't refuse. So we came home, on the night of 30 Dec 2000, with a $2000 music system --- just the interconnects and speaker cables cost us more than to $100. We, like most government projects, had exceeded our budget by 100%, and like most ministers in most democratically elected governments, we felt thoroughly cheerful at the end of it all. I remember that it was drizzling lightly that evening, and we found a cab with a luggage carrier on its roof to carry all the stuff back. We checked whether he'd be willing to take a fare to New Bombay in the evening --- many city cabs demur --- and loaded the speakers on the roof, praying that drizzle wouldn't affect anything inside. Anyone who knows the Bombay weather knows that it almost never rains here outside the monsoons; this was an odd day. Anyway, we made it, lifted the speakers up to our first-floor flat, and spent the New Year's eve setting things up. We had never heard such good sound at our or any friend's home till then.

Many, many years later, I saw a review of the Cambridge Audio A500 integrated amp. This amp has exactly the same circuit and features as my C500 + P500 combo. The review is on TNT Audio, who are excellent at telling it like it is. If you have any interest in my audio systems, you have got to read this review. Got to.

We later sat down and did some hard thinking about the amount of money spent. In terms of our monthly income, I think we spent about the same percentage of our monthly income on this system as my dad had spent on the Sonodyne system in 1983. So I guess it was not that revolutionary or extravagant an investment after all.

And this realisation saddened, and saddens, me. I have many friends who earn more than me and have purchased music systems, but who simply cannot imagine spending a lakh of rupees (about USD 2000) on a good music system. It is not lack of funds which makes them go for a Yamaha amp or a Bose Acoustimass; they have large and expensive cars and spend regularly on holidays abroad or in eating out at expensive restaurants. It is something else. If they had said they don't care much for music and they'd bought Samsung boomboxes for twelve thousand rupees "for the kids", I would have nothing more to say. I have four friends who own Bose Acoustimass speaker systems, and at least three of them had very pedestrian Yamaha home-theatre amps. One friend even bought a two-channel Bose Acoustimass speaker system and a six-channel Yamaha amp. Each and every one of these friends earns at least 50% more than my wife and I together do. Why do they have such preferences?

I have been able to persuade one friend to re-think his music system. He was the one with the two-channel speaker system and the six-channel Yamaha amp. I think he woke up after he heard his old cassettes on my Nak. His employer, an MNC bank, shifted him to Singapore soon after this. There, he first replaced his ageing, decrepit Denon dual-well cassette deck with a brand new Nakamichi DR-10. The DR-10 is probably the only really good 3-head cassette deck in production today, and he got it cheap, for about $300 US. He then proceeded to replace his Japanese CD player with a new Arcam. And then he replaced his Bose Acoustimass 2 with a pair of B&W 805 standmounts. These are the smallest models in the top-of-the-line B&W 800 series. I had no hand in the selection of these B&W boxes --- I just heard one day that he'd done it. Now he's looking out for an amp.

What makes me feel good about his story is that he has learned to listen. He has learned that the sound quality of a system is not directly related to the brand's ad budget or price. He says he listened to the top model in the B&W 700 series and this dimunitive 805, and he found the 805 sounding better. He also says he can hear a clear audible improvement after he swapped his CD player. He is now trying to arrange for amp dealers to come to his place and let him audition their amps with his CD player and his speakers. I think he has learned to take his music listening seriously. There is hope.