How do you take an admired and successful integrated amplifier, one that’s won respect and plaudits around the world, and make it even better? Well, if you’re a Cambridge Audio engineer, you examine every aspect of the performance - and then you do everything you can to make it ‘more’. More refined, more precise, more engrossing… more musical. The CXA81: it’s everything you loved about the CXA80, but more so.

All the research, all the development, all the time and effort that’s been expended on the CXA81 has been for one reason alone: to make this the most accomplished and absorbing integrated amplifier ever offered at the price. Every component selected, and every engineering decision taken, is based entirely on the desire to progress. The CXA81 has been designed and specified without compromise, in order to deliver the complete musical picture.

The CXA81 is designed to bring your music to life, no matter how it’s stored. So it features an entirely new digital board, including the cutting-edge ESS Sabre ES9016 digital-to-analogue convertor. Which means digital audio files up to a heady 32bit/384kHz, or DSD256, are brought dramatically to life, with every detail and nuance delivered intact and in full. The CXA81 combines unparalleled accuracy with vivid musicality, without sacrificing convenience.

Thanks to numerous improvements and upgrades - and thanks to an overspecified toroidal transformer - the CXA81 delivers a prodigious 80 watts of power per channel. This means the CXA81 has complete authority over even the most demanding speakers, it means big dynamic shifts in music are handled with total control, and it means the whole musical picture is available no matter if you’re playing at discreet background levels or at party-time volumes.

The CXA81 covers all connectivity bases, giving you complete freedom of choice. As well as digital optical and digital coaxial inputs, it features unbalanced stereo RCA inputs alongside balanced XLR sockets - and wireless connectivity via Bluetooth’s cutting-edge aptX HD standard is on board too. So there’s no need to compromise on performance in the name of convenience.

At the heart of the CXA81 beats a completely reimagined and redesigned power amplifier stage with optimised capacitor values. The resulting sound is pristine but not clinical, with unrivalled musical coherence no matter the source.