Cambridge Audio L/R S review: Desktop speakers worth waiting for

With its trio of ‘L/R’ wireless stereo speaker systems, Cambridge has – presumably intentionally – made life rather difficult for itself. All three – there's small 'S', medium 'M', and large 'X' – are priced to go pretty much head-to-head with class-leading products.

The L/R S is the smallest and most affordable of the range, so looks to have perhaps the toughest assignment of the lot. Does it have what it takes to properly challenge an incumbent that’s been at the head of the pack for years?

Price & Availability

In Asia-Pacific territories the Cambridge L/R S is already on sale. But in Europe and the Americas it’s on sale from 1st April (which is not a joke) – for which you can join the brand's waitlist to get in line.

In the United Kingdom it will cost £399 (or £449, if you want the real walnut veneer finish), while in the USA it’s set to launch at $549/$599. In Australia it’s already selling at AU$949/AU$1049.

Features

What’s initially most striking about the feature-set of the L/R S is the system’s active configuration.

Rather than the more common ‘powered’ alternative, where one speaker takes care of all the power, all the decoding and all the other stuff that needs to happen before sending analogue information to its passive partner, the Cambridge system uses a more complex and more effective arrangement.

Only the primary speaker receives mains power – but there are two channels of amplification for each speaker (one for each driver), and a full digital signal processing (DSP) crossover in each speaker, which serves a PWM (pulse-width modulation) signal to each of the amplifiers.

A bespoke four-conductor cable connects the primary speaker to the secondary, along which all power and digital audio signals travel. So you have to be a-okay with a cable connecting the pair – as there's no wireless option.

Incoming analogue signals via the line-level stereo RCA input are digitised to 24bit/48kHz in the DSP. The digital optical and USB-C inputs can cope with 24bit/96kHz information, although this is resampled to 24bit/48kHz too – and the same is true of information received wirelessly via Bluetooth (which has aptX HD codec support).

All physical and wireless connectivity is with the primary speaker, as is all amplification – and it also features a pre-out for a subwoofer. Both the primary and secondary speakers have a screw-down connection for the 2m length of inter-speaker cable (Cambridge will sell you a 5m alternative if you feel the need), and both have a bass reflex slot at the top of the rear of the cabinet.

Amplification totals 100 watts of Class D power – and it’s divided equally between the system’s four drivers. Each speaker features a 21mm hard-dome tweeter behind a waveguide and phase cap (and coloured a particularly racy shade of orange), above a 76mm mid/bass driver. In conjunction with the reflex slots, Cambridge suggests this arrangement is good for a frequency response of 55Hz - 24kHz.

Performance

There are two areas of its sonic performance in which the Cambridge L/R S is anything less than utterly assured – so I’ll deal with them now before I get to all the stuff it does really well.

The L/R S overstates and overplays low-frequency information just a little. I know for a lot of listeners that’s not going to seem like any kind of issue, but nevertheless – the ideal is a nice, even frequency response from the bottom end to the top, and similarly consistent tonality. Here the bass sounds are slightly forward, and there’s a little more heat to their tone than there is in the rest of the frequency range.

And while soon enough I’m going to talk about the Cambridge system’s excellent facility with stereo focus and soundstaging, as well as its ability to leave plenty of space between the elements of a recording without making them sound remote from each other, this only applies if you’re not listening at full-on, oppressive volume levels. Turn the L/R S all the way up and it starts to sound quite two-dimensional and crowded – so the pro move is to turn it down again, just a little.

So yes: onto the good stuff. Well, there’s that excellent facility with soundstaging and stereo focus, for starters. The L/R S contrives to sound considerably larger than the physical size of its cabinets, and it creates a large and well-defined soundstage on which there’s plenty of room for the individual elements of a recording to operate.

It sounds unified at the same time, though, and there’s a pretty tangible sense of ‘performance’ by prevailing standards. The fact that it’s attentive to detail at every part of the frequency range, and is able to put details into their proper ‘broad’ or ‘fine’ context, only adds to the impression of singularity and togetherness.

There’s more than enough dynamic headroom available to make the difference between the quietest and the most intense passages in a recording apparent – and the system’s attention to detail extends as far as keeping an eye out for those minor harmonic variations that go towards making a complete picture.

Despite the slight bloom in frequency response at the bottom end, the L/R S controls its low-frequency activity with care, which is evident in the naturalistic way the system expresses rhythms. Those over-confident bass sounds don’t create any audible drag – if a recording requires momentum, momentum is what it gets.

With, again, the exception of the very bottom end, tonality is nicely neutral and convincing. Treble sounds have just as much substance as they do shine, and so remain balanced rather than edging towards, well, edgy. And the midrange communicates quite freely – the Cambridge is able to impart the character and emotion in a voice just as readily as it is the texture and timbre.

Design & Usability

Dimensions of 226 x 134 x 180mm (HxWxD) per cabinet are on the larger side for a desktop speaker system, it’s true – but as long as you’re reasonably tidy the L/R S is definitely viable.

And once in position, the standard of construction and finish make sure it looks (and even feels) the part. Each of the five coloured finishes – the white of my review sample, orange, black, deep-ish green and definitely deep blue – is a tactile semi-matte, and the crisp edges and corners of the cabinets make for a sharp, clean look.

If you want to go down the more traditional route (and give Cambridge some more money), then a real walnut veneer is also available.

The speaker appears to ‘float’ on a little recessed plinth, which has four small rubber feet integrated – and there’s the option of some ‘tilt’ stands if you’re super-serious about desktop audio.

But just as these speakers are not too big for a desk, they’re not too small to be positioned on speaker stands either. No matter where you place them, though, you’ll be greeted by the sight of two identically sized black circles that surround the drivers – there are no grilles, not even as an option.

Obviously there’s no control app – this is not a networked device – and there are very few physical controls on the speakers themselves. The primary speaker has a button at the rear that deals with power on/off and cycles through your input options – but other than that, there are just three toggle switches to assist with initial set-up. One lets the primary speaker know if it’s the left or the right channel, another tells it if it’s on a desktop or not, and the third informs it if it’s near a wall or out in some free space.

Everything else is done using the supplied remote control handset. It’s on the small and hard side, and could use some backlighting – but it covers off every function, and because it’s a Bluetooth rather than an RF device, it’s less reliant on having line-of-sight to the ‘primary’ speaker.

The remote also gives access to a trio of EQ presets: they’re called ‘normal’, ‘movie’ and ‘voice’. Cambridge has also deployed its ‘DynamEQ’ technology, which attempts to make appropriate adjustments to bass and treble in response to any changes in volume you input.

Cambridge Audio L/R S review: Verdict

At the first attempt, Cambridge has comprehensively crashed the ‘vaguely affordable desktop stereo speaker system’ party – and in serious style.

The L/R S is by no means your only choice at this sort of money – but it’s an indication of just how right this product is that it must be spoken of in the same breath as the class leaders, and absolutely demands your attention.

Also consider

At the risk of stating the obvious, anyone considering the Cambridge L/R S should also give strong consideration to the Ruark MR1 mkIII. It has loads to recommend it, from the elegant nature of its build and finish, through its usefully compact dimensions (it’s even smaller than the L/R S), to its robust, insightful and quite expansive sound. It scores spec-points over the Cambridge thanks to its phono stage (for use with a turntable), although it’s a slightly more prosaic powered model rather than the active alternative Cambridge has achieved through some stunt engineering.