Paying a higher voluntary excess– there’s two different types of excess: voluntary and compulsory. While you can’t choose how much your compulsory excess is, you can for your voluntary. A higher excess tends to bring down the price of your car insurance. However, make sure you don’t end up choosing a total excess level which is higher than the value of your car. If you do this, you may not be able to make a claim for any damage to your car. Putting the AXA35 on a little plastic plinth that’s − to all intents and purposes – invisible, is a canny move on Cambridge Audio’s part, too. It makes the amp look a little like it’s floating, and in a sector of the market where aesthetics play a distant second fiddle to cost considerations, it’s a very welcome design oddity. Cambridge Audio AXA35 features − Defiantly old-fashioned when it comes to connections and features As well as being more powerful, the AXA35 also improves internal component quality, giving improved sonic detail and realism with less distortion. The toroidal power transformer and separate pre/power amp circuit boards are features usually only found in much more expensive amplifiers, making the AXA35 something of a giant-slayer. At the top end, things are slightly smoothed off by the amplifier, though the CD player used alone sounds rather bright and light. Together, the two produce a sound that’s not the last word in ambience and atmosphere, with concert-hall acoustics more hinted at than made explicit, but again this is only really apparent when comparing the two with much more expensive components. The AXA25 makes do with conventional knobs for volume, input selection and so on, while the pricier (!) AXA35 looks rather more grown-up with a display and a menu system, creating a much less cluttered fascia. The display shows input and volume levels as a default, while pressing the ‘menu’ button beside the volume control will allow access to bass, treble and balance functions.

I gave it an all-around listen − Neil Young’s Cortez the Killer via Spotify, on a smartphone, through the 3.5mm input, sounds confident, straight-edged (as much as Neil Young can ever sound all that disciplined) and there’s plenty of detail revealed about the condition of both Young’s larynx and the state of his guitar strings. The low-level dynamics are handled well, and there’s well-controlled impact to the drumkit. The LM3886 does, however, have inbuilt protection against over and under-voltage, power supply and output short circuits, thermal runaway and instantaneous temperature peaks. They are durable and reliable chips and offer excellent performance comparable to a discrete output stage. Regardless of the amplifier you use you should always consider its limitations in partnering equipment and the environment. I’ve fixed a few AM10s over the years with blown output chips all as a result of driving too heavy a load at too high a volume. If your system is obviously distorting or if you’re running the amp at or near its maximum volume, upgrade to a model with more power.There’s a shortage of high-quality hi-fi electronics at the budget end of the market, so it’s good to see Cambridge Audio produce an amplifier with the musicality and all-round appeal of the AXA35.

It's hard to believe that the original Wharfedale Diamond is now past its thirtieth birthday. All those decades ago, it was the Diamond speaker that proved, for the first time, that excellent quality sound could be achieved from a small, budget speaker. Since then there have been dozens of imitators, but the Diamonds remain amongst the best available. You can drive a 4Ω load with the AXA35, and you’ll get just shy of 60W per channel before clipping starts to occur. Expect about 50W into a 4Ω load at more reasonable distortion levels. I didn’t test this extensively as blowing up the review sample is generally frowned upon, accidentally or otherwise. some of these web prices are cheaper than in-store, so please mention that you've seen these offers online)With a front port, these bass reflex speakers are punchier than you might expect and in no way could they ever be described as tinny. Over all, they may be small but the sound is grown-up, with excellent staging, realism and surprisingly powerful. That means you have the choice of comprehensive insurance or third-party, fire and theft car insurance. The main difference between the two is that comprehensive car insurance will cover your car for damage, even if it’s your fault. You also won’t be able to choose a voluntary excess level with third-party, fire and theft. Having a higher voluntary excess can help you reduce your car insurance price, so it’s worth keeping that in mind. However, you’re best off looking at what each type of cover gives you so you can work out what would work best for you. How to keep your insurance price down As the model numbers suggest, the AXA35 is more powerful than its junior counterpart, delivering 35Wpc into 8 ohms rather than 25Wpc. While those figures may seem low, they’re more than adequate to drive most speakers likely to be used with amps at this price to serious levels in all but the largest rooms. Keep things sensible, with standmount or even floorstanding models of reasonable sensitivity, and you won’t go far wrong.

Skilfully engineered, the Cambridge Audio AXC25 puts the emphasis firmly on sound quality. Features such as separate power and output circuit boards and a centrally mounted CD transport help reduce distortion and maximise the potential of the high quality Wolfson DAC (Digital to Analogue Convertor). Features are basic but the sound is certainly a step above its rivals. The AXR100 mostly mirrors its brother's spec sheet, building on it with a 100-watt output as well as twin optical and single coaxial inputs. On the inside, the AXA35 is − hey! − a 35W-per-channel device. It’s not the most exciting number you ever saw written down, but in practice it’s more than enough to drive most price-appropriate speakers to quite significant volumes without alarm. Cambridge Audio AXA35 sound quality − Confident and remarkably self-assured performance The rest of this review focuses on the AXA35 exclusively as I don’t have an aXA25 for comparison. The AXA35 has plenty of useful facilities for a budget amplifier in the contexts of an aptly specified hi-fi system. When compared against a 2004 era Cambridge A5, years of inflation and cost prioritisation mean the omission of a preamplifier output and the second pair of speaker outputs for bi-wiring, not that bi-wiring offers any real-world advantage. There’s no true tape monitor in the newer amps either, nor an option to bypass the tone controls. You do get a remote though, which the A5 didn’t have. For ease of use, the DP-29F is a fully automatic design. Simply select the size of the record and the tonearm starts at just the right place. It also features auto-return, so you don't need to worry about damaging the stylus at the end of the record.

It should be noted though that abusing the tone controls to get more bass out of a low-powered system is not always a good idea. It’s nothing to do with some snobbish view that “it’s not how hi-fi should be heard” blah blah, but because with a 35W amp excessive use of the tone controls at high volume will cause the amp to clip sooner. Clipping, a flattening of the peaks in the audio waveform, is more often than not the cause of blown speakers, not excessive power. Thus you’re more likely to damage your speakers with this amp if you turn the bass to max and crank up the volume than you will if you leave the tone controls flat. The cabinet isn't just compact, it's also very solid. This combination gives the Diamonds an extremely accurate sound quality as the cabinet doesn't flex or vibrate. Equally impressive are the drive units. A soft dome tweeter gives the clarity and smoothness of sound you'd expect from a more expensive speaker, while the woofer cone uses a carbon fibre type weave to offer extremely taut and responsive bass. It’s true to say that the new casework is better, but examples of poorly damped biscuit-tin casework are more prevalent in boutique British equipment at several times the price of any Cambridge. Poorly built casework and preschool electronics design aside, some of that gear is ugly enough to offend a blind man’s sense of aestheticism. Cambridge do not give a spec into a 4Ω load, which is unsurprising given that the power supply isn’t built to drive difficult or low impedance loads. Larger reservoir caps, for example, would have given the AXA35 a significant bump in headroom and a bit more grunt. It’s not uncommon to see 4700UF caps as a minimum on the PSU rails of a DIY-built Gainclone. You could up the voltage too – the LM3886 can handle peak input voltages of +/-94V, and comfortably up to +/-40V with ample cooling, which the AXA35 certainly provides.