With classical pieces, the power of a well made Class AB amp becomes apparent. Certainly, there is no lack of attack here. The quick change from soft to loud, for example, is realistic and makes you sit up. One thing I particularly like, without even listening out for it, is the transients. Detail extraction is great with this album and a wide variety of musical content. The natural, lifelike presentation in many of the tracks showcases the capabilities of the Edge W amp well. This certainly is true with Hall & OatesвЂ™ Live At The Troubadour recording. In simpler terms, itвЂ™s easier to imagine a performer right in front of you, like in a live gig. I had used the Lamm preamp to balance my flatter but faster Belcanto Class D amps at home but with the Edge W, the presence is even clearer. The Lamm preamp has a way of adding depth to a performance and the Edge W conveys that without getting in the way. The soundstaging is decent as well, at least up to the limits of my speakers. Nothing seems congested or is left wanting. There is an easy, room-filling airiness in the music delivered. Once fired up, the Edge W shows that it delivers power effortlessly in spades, ready for more. I went with unbalanced вЂ“ thereвЂ™s a switch for an easy change. The Edge W lets you connect up using either balanced or unbalanced outputs, depending on what gear you have.

The other gear I have in my home setup are a Bluesound Node 2 streaming tracks from a local network drive and Tidal, a Belcanto DAC 3.5 digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and a Lamm LL2.1 tube pre-amp, which was previously hooked up to my Belcanto Class D mono amps. It offers enough power with 200 watts into 4 ohms (or 100 watts into 8 ohms). I am only driving smaller B&W 805S bookshelf speakers so I connected to a single Edge W. Piqued by that, I took up an offer to try out the Cambridge Audio Class AB amp with my humbler setup at home.

IвЂ™d expected more expensive Classes to do the job but the Edge Ws did fine on first listen. Indeed, I was a little surprised recently to see two Edge Ws running in mono at the B&W showroom in Singapore, powering two large 803 D3 speakers. Larger than the Azur amps, the Edge W power amp aimed at driving large speakers is part of the British brandвЂ™s 50th anniversary signature range that also includes a preamp and network streamer. The Edge W looks more like a more costly Classe amplifier, to be honest, than the Azur range that Cambridge Audio is known for. When I first saw the Cambridge Audio Edge W at the showroom here in Singapore, I was surprised that the solid-looking power amplifier had come from a company that had more often been seen as value-for-money than money-no-object. The Cambridge Audio Edge W is the British hi-fi brandвЂ™s signature power amplifier.

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