“We aspire to make stuff that's genuinely going to delight people”, says Cambridge Audio's CEO Stuart George. No pressure there, then! Yet the seemingly boundless enthusiasm that he displays just powers things along.

We believe that we're the oldest remaining British hi-fi brand. Other companies have different pressures to contend with, but are able to take a long term, strategic view about things…

Indeed they are, because Cambridge Audio is now in its third incarnation and still going strong. The company's 'modern era' is approaching its thirtieth year – it was back in 1994 that James Johnson-Flint and Julian Richer (he of Richer Sounds fame) bought the brand and relaunched it under the aegis of Audio Partnership. Previous to that, its second era had seen the company sell some extremely highly regarded – and quite expensive – CD players throughout most of the nineteen eighties. And the first incarnation of Cambridge Audio stretches right back to 1968 – just ten years after the stereo LP appeared!

“What James and Julian brought to the brand was the philosophy of bringing value for money across a broad spectrum of price points”, Stuart tells me. “We have an ethos of making world-class products, and what that means to us is something that's both recognised by experts within the industry – we do take great pride in the awards that Cambridge products have won over the years – and at the same time we aim for something that's popular with customers. We are about delighting customers. We take great pride in the fact that we have been the best-selling amplifier brand probably over the last twenty years in the UK. So offering value for money is fundamental to our ethos – it's about that customer-centricity if you will, delivering something that people want…”

Cambridge Audio CEO Stuart George

Stuart certainly likes talking about Cambridge Audio customers. “For example”, he adds, “StreamMagic has been around for twelve or thirteen years now; the first product was 2011 and ever since we've been working on improving it. We think it's the best music streaming device available, and offers remarkable value – but it's convenient and easy to use. Being easy to set-up is so important because the chances of losing your customer in the first seven hours is probably quite high, and if the bulk of that time can be spent listening to music rather than banging your head against the table, that can only be a good thing.”

That's hard to argue with. In my twenty years of setting up and reviewing streamers, I've had some pretty arduous experiences trying to get streamers up and running – yet recent time spent with the MXN10 proved quite the opposite for me. I then put it to Stuart that, given that the company's products are so affordable and easy to use, this might actually put some more hardened audiophiles off?

He's diplomatic: “We're genuinely proud of the fact that people compare our products to ones that are many times more expensive – that's what it's all about, it all comes back to delighting customers… Of course, what you pay for an item does not necessarily represent the value that it provides to you. There are very good reasons for what some might call 'overpaying' for certain things, but at the same time there are many who feel they can't hear the benefits of a high quality sound system, don't know the technologies and feel like an outsider to the hi-fi world. We'd like to break down those barriers, and if that comes at the cost of people being a bit rude about Cambridge the brand, I guess that's their problem and not ours.”

It's certainly true that when the 'modern' incarnation of the company appeared in the nineties, a few eyebrows were raised. With products like the original DACMagic DAC and CD4SE CD player, a number of rather more fancy hi-fi separates had their lunch eaten by these budget Cambridge Audio separates. Styling, build and finish weren't anything to write home about back then, but as a young 'cub' reporter on a British hi-fi magazine, I was scratching my head about how they could offer such high-quality engineering inside the box. As were, I suspect, some of the company's rivals…

“To me, Cambridge Audio represents an entry point for many buyers”, says Stuart. “During the Audio Partnership phase, now the longest era for us, we've tried to create a bit of a ladder if you will, or a journey that people can go on through their lifetime of hi-fi – so we have that new customer. And we definitely have a discerning customer type, who is someone who understands the law of diminishing returns. We try to provide the opportunity for that journey, so you start with AX, go through CX, and we're looking at bringing out a new range that will go above that – and then you can go all the way up to Edge. And you can step to one side and seek out to the compact EVO products.”

He continues: “We try to offer the same proposition in terms of value at every level – so we would love to take people on an ongoing journey. I think the more down-to-earth, friendly face that Cambridge Audio has is quite refreshing to some people who are relatively new to the hi-fi industry, and who can be put off by any hint of snobbery and elitism. We feel passionate about hi-fi, and define our sense of purpose as a business as trying to make life sound better. It's a recognition of the power of music, to transform the feelings and emotions that you have at any given moment in time in your life…”

“When James and Julian took on the business, they felt they should offer products to as many people as possible. James particularly saw that whereas most British hi-fi products at that time, there was an opportunity opening up with globalisation, to offer the right levels of quality and value by manufacturing in China. It was a real challenge, but it was James's entrepreneurial spirit that led him down that path – it would have appealed to his instincts far more than making more esoteric engineering-focused products that were less accessible to the buying public.”

Cambridge Audio wasn't the first Western hi-fi company to manufacture in the Far East – many products had been made in Taiwan and Hong Kong for decades, even back in the nineties – but it was very early to China. All its products were designed in the United Kingdom in the company's London offices, and continue to be so today. The company has come a long way since it was based at The Mill at St. Ives, Cambridgeshire, with a landlord going by the name of Clive Sinclair – he of the computer and electric trike fame! A few years back, as a fitting tribute to the original company's founder Gordon Edge, Cambridge Audio named its flagship amplifier range after him.

CAMBRIDGE CULTURE

Stuart George has an interesting background, albeit not completely typical for the CEO of a medium-sized UK hi-fi manufacturer. “I describe myself as a former accountant”, he tells me. “It wasn't right for me so I moved into commerce and industry, but didn't stay there too long. Then I came to Cambridge Audio way back in 1996 as the Financial Controller, so I've now been here for nearly twenty seven years, working with James. There were two things that particularly attracted me. Firstly I met Julian and read his book The Richer Way, and thought it was a really powerful statement for retailing and business generally – and motivating the whole organisation around this sense of purpose. That was inspiring to me. And secondly because the business was effectively very close to the music industry, which was dear to my heart and a very strong attraction.”

Stuart continues: “It has been such fun, we've got a great crew, a great team of people. It's always about the team, it always has been. I rose to Financial Director, then I got involved in other aspects of the business, I've overseen marketing, sales and engineering at different points in time. I've done everything within the business through the years, and I guess that's why I've ended up where I am now. I'm genuinely proud of what we've done so far and I'd like to get us a bit further down the road still. I think there's a long way to go for Cambridge…”

He says that his company can offer something that's a little different to others. “We hold a position somewhere between mainstream audio products and the much more esoteric very high end hi-fi products which aren't accessible to everybody. And it's about trying to find the right middle ground, hitting a sweet spot. We've done that along the way, with Melomania 1 earphones particularly – they came at a perfect time for us, represented tremendous value and had superb sound quality – and so that brings in lots of people. So we know what we're doing can appeal to a lot of people, so it's about spreading the word.”

I've visited Cambridge Audio several times over the past three decades and have always been impressed by the company's 'can do' attitude. I think it's fair to say that some companies I've been to over the years present themselves as being a little – shall we say – lacking in motivation. With this one, however, there always seems to be a buzz – a sort of electrical charge fizzing in the air, if you like. It certainly attracts a certain type of employee…

Stuart agrees: “We have a culture document that we call The Cambridge Way, that we give to each of our colleagues and it spells out what we're about. It's our way of thinking, and inspires the behaviour we have within the business – and we reckon that behaviour is what people receive above and beyond the product. We try and empower our people and give them positive work lives, and it informs the brand. Work is such an enormous part of our lives, that we have to enjoy it – and if we can't then we're doing the wrong thing in the wrong place. We have a happiness survey that's done anonymously that we do a couple of times a year, and we get good feedback from the colleges, with around ninety percent happy!”

INTO THE FUTURE

Stuart explains to me that Cambridge's Audio's brand new, just-released AXN10 and MXN10 streamers are the thirteenth and fourteenth StreamMagic products that the company has launched. “Our technology portfolio is not something that many brands have in our space, and it's something we're immensely proud of. We've now got more than 100,000 units powered by StreamMagic out in the real world, which is an amazing achievement that we're immensely proud of. We make tremendous amplifiers as well, really well-received, great value amps that aren't necessarily cheap – look at the CXA81, it comes at a proper price but is well regarded. There's been a continual evolution of these products, we're always trying to find ways to improve them…”

“Then there's our flagship Edge range of amplifiers – named after our founding father, to celebrate fifty years of Cambridge. They're big beasts, and consume quite lot of power, but deliver a wonderful experience if that's suitable for your own environment. It's not easy for me to see us going beyond that in terms of market segments – a cost-no-object statement product doesn't really fit with our ethos and what the company stands for. So although we're really proud of what we've done with Edge, and our Class XD and XA technologies in the past, we will evolve and build upon these – but the key technological driver for us will be StreamMagic.”

He continues: “StreamMagic offers the beauty of convenience. We like to think that it does everything that Sonos does, but better – with the exception of multiroom, but many of the music streaming platforms offer this anyway, these days. So moving StreamMagic forward is going to be a big deal for us. We think it's got more relevance than just hi-fi products; obviously we've moved into a more lifestyle space with our EVO systems and we'll keep trying to offer that. It's got to be something that people are going to recognise for its merits. Right now, we're working on a number of new products, including ones that sit below our flagship Edge range.”

Can we expect more personal audio products, I ask? “Certainly yes”, replies Stuart. “The headphone has been an important part of our development over the past few years. It obviously appeals to a different customer cohort, a different audience while at the same time having a significant overlap with specialist hi-fi. But we don't have huge budgets to break a new product range like some of these companies have, so we have to do it by our customers – and journalists saying so when they think they've heard something good.”

Stuart says that one of the company's strengths is that it has the ability “to operate anywhere within an audio product space”, which means both lifestyle, portable and specialist hi-fi designs – and now automotive, too. “The other thing that we announced last year is the partnership with DeLorean, and we're going to continue to work on that one too. We would hope this is only the first partnership in this space, and would like to work with other car brands down the line.”

He explains that the headphone market has got enormous potential. “We think there's much more that we can do there to offer our values. That small market share that we're going after can still be very significant within our business; our success is based on our ability to satisfy a group of customers and have a scale that makes sense from a commercial standpoint. We don't aspire to competing with the Apples of this world, but we might have aspirations to compete with Bowers & Wilkins, a fantastic brand, and to take market share from the Sonys of this world too. We think there's space to play because our brand has got a great story, but world domination is still unlikely! We want to get people talking about our brand, that's how we need to work, getting people excited about Cambridge Audio.”

One of the boons of being relatively small in a large audio market, is that the company can be very fleet of foot. If it sees a gap in the market, or wants to do something interesting just for the sake it, it has more flexibility to do so. That's why we've seen some downright quirky products from Cambridge Audio over the years – indeed, let's not forget that the most successful thing from the beginning of its modern era was the original DACMagic DAC. At the time, that seemed like a downright eccentric thing to do! Stuart adds: “Some products we have in our range aren't necessarily there because we see a commercial imperative, but rather we make them because our customers want them and we think it's a relevant thing for the brand to participate in.”

The company's decision to stick with physical media – i.e. LP and CD – whilst selling vast numbers of streamers, is testament to this. The Alva TT2 V2 turntable is a case in point. Stuart explains: “We were really proud when we launched that product, for it to be the first Bluetooth aptX HD turntable in the world. It garnered us great press as a consequence, and that's important – spreading the word requires us to make interesting products in our lineup which won't always be commercially the best offer. We think it represents really good value for money when you break it down in terms of all the elements it does offer. We want to offer something that's relevant to a group of our customers that will appreciate it and enjoy the functionality that it offers. And obviously here convenience is really important.”

Cambridge Audio continues to make silver disc spinners too, despite the barrage of sales figures showing the bottom dropping out of the market. “I totally respect why many other manufacturers are pulling out of this part of the market,” says Stuart, “but for us it's about customer choice and being able to provide the things that our customers want – and we can still make it work from our point of view. If you think of all those CDs in people's homes, they still want to listen to them.”

Looking at the wider picture, expect to see more compact streaming music systems from Cambridge Audio. “There is always going to be a place for separates, but I think it's somewhat reducing. Separates have their place and always will have – like sport cars I suppose – but we've had a tremendous reception to the EVO one-box systems and we think there's much more room to work on these. I think that these days people love the sound, but don't necessarily want to see the product. We went for something that's a bit more friendly from a furniture aspect rather than being a tech product first and foremost. So I think that convenience and usability will keep gaining importance; I think the aesthetic will change and be more minimalistic and home-friendly – but I do believe that there will always be a space for separates.”

Cambridge Audio launched the iconic P40 integrated amplifier a little over fifty years ago – but if you see one in the flesh, it's amazing how timeless its styling is, and how intelligently packaged the design is. Certainly, compared to the majority of its competitors, it offered innovation, fresh thinking and value for money. Despite so much water going under the bridge since then, it's fair to say that the modern incarnation of this illustrious brand is still doing surprisingly similar things today.

For more information visit Cambridge Audio