AshK
Cambridge Audio’s latest home theatre receiver will be available in NZ from November. The 551 is based on a compact chassis and features seven discrete amplifiers driven by a low-flux toroidal transformer, which are separated from the processing and input stages. Special attention has been given to the 551R’s digital to analogue conversion process to enhance the audio potential of every connected digital device such as Blu-ray players, satellite boxes, iPod docks, games consoles etc.
The 551R also offers all the latest processing technologies including Cirrus Logic DSPs and support for the new-generation CODECs such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio. A Faroudja 1080p video scaler improves performance from lower resolution TV broadcasts and DVDs as well as transcoding analogue video inputs to the digital domain for simpler and neater connection to the TV using just one HDMI cable.
The 551R boasts four HMDI inputs and a single HDMI output which fully supports 3DTV/Deep colour pass-through and Audio Return from newer digital TVs. It also features a wide selection of analogue video connections (ready for transcoding), four digital audio connections and a total of six analogue audio inputs.
Furthermore, the 551R includes a host of processing and adjustment features to get the most from every multi-channel movie soundtrack. These include full individual crossover adjustment and bass management, lip sync adjustment, Dolby Dynamic range control and DTS-HD speaker re-map. below). The 551R also offers Cambridge Audio’s Microphone Controlled Auto Set-up (CAMCAS) to tailor the 551R’s performance to any room, this comes with a microphone to complete this simple procedure.
The most surprising feature of the 551R is its diminutive size – made possible thanks to a unique cooling design system called X-TractTM. A combination of forced cooling and natural convection effectively draws heat away from the substantial transformer and output stages and means the 551R can operate extremely quietly, at a low temperature.
Power output is 60W x 7 or 90W x 2.
The NZ RRP is going to be $1599.
