Cambridge Audio

Cambridge Audio was founded in England in 1968 by a group of young technology graduates established a high-technology R&D and prototyping business.

The first Cambridge Audio product was the short-lived P40 integrated amplifier with its 2 x 20W of power. It was the first amplifier to use a toroidal transformer and, in addition to its advanced technical specifications, the P40 created quite a stir, thanks to its iconic and innovative technology, boasted a super slim-line case designed by Roy Gray, from Woodhuysen Design. Unfortunately, the P40 wasn’t really suitable for scaling up to mass production and it was soon superseded by the slightly more powerful P50, which went on to great success.

Soon the company was turning out thousands of P50s from its factory in St Ives, Cambridgeshire. However, despite strong sales the company still needed more investment to develop new products and so it was sold to C E Hammond Ltd, a large global distributor of Revox tape recorders at the time. Legendary audio industry figure Stan Curtis was brought on board to design new products and before long the company had grown to 300 employees and was producing some of the best audio kit on the market.

By the early 1970s, Cambridge Audio had added loudspeakers to its product line-up and it soon carved out a reputation for audio equipment that offered a clean and neutral sound that enabled the original recording session to shine through without any of the added artefacts that were popular in other markets, such as the USA or the Far East. Due to the Cambridge Audio design philosophy, the term ‘British Sound’ became shorthand around the world for audio equipment that served up music the way it was intended to be heard by the musicians and recording engineers of the time.