Cambridge Audio AZUR 751BD User Manual download pdf (Page 2)

Cambridge Azur752BD Blu-ray Disc Player

For those averse to components with cooling fans, the 752BD is

fanless and quiet in operation other than the slight noise from the disc-

spinning spindle motor. The 752BD’s remote control is slimmer than

most with a gently curved bottom and flat, metal top-plate. The back-

light nicely illuminates the text or icon on each button, but you must

manually press the backlight button otherwise the remote stays dark

when you press buttons. The bottom of the remote has a silky rubber

coating that feels great but doesn’t contribute a lot to maintaining a

solid grip on the remote. The centrally located navigation wheel is sur-

rounded with a circle of eight more buttons that would sometimes get

mistaken for the navigation wheel itself. Familiarity with the remote over

time reduced the tendency to press the wrong button, but with so

many other remotes not having additional buttons that close to the nav-

igation wheel, perhaps it would be a better ergo choice to place that

outer circle of buttons a bit farther from the navigation controls. The

752BD’s owner’s manual is excellent, with clear and concise descrip-

tions of functions and options. The machine is well packed and comes

out of the box wrapped in a “Cambridge blue” fabric protective bag.

Video Performance

Blu-ray Disc players have reached a pinnacle of video image quali-

ty that is putting most of them more or less on the same plane when it

comes to how they present Blu-ray image quality. For a while, the

PlayStation

3 and OPPO BDP-83 and 83SE had a pretty hard lock on

great looking and accurate images from Blu-ray discs. But from that

period in time (ca. 2009) forward, Blu-ray Disc players, as a group,

have gotten more and more accurate. Of course, this may not hold true

at the low end of the price range for Blu-ray Disc players, but for mid-

range and high-end Blu-ray Disc players, accuracy seems to have

improved steadily, until we have reached the point we are at today with

most Blu-ray Disc players producing images that are very similar. Back

in the days of analog video, manufacturers could (and would) play with

the outputs to massage the images in whatever ways they thought

would produce more demand for their product. There wasn’t much

focus on accuracy. These days, manufacturers seem to have adopted

the motto “accurate Blu-ray Disc players are the best Blu-ray Disc

players.” The Azur 752BD is another disc player that really gets Blu-ray

image quality right. There’s literally nothing to complain about or pick at

when it comes to the image quality you get from Blu-ray Discs. What is

encoded on the disc is what you see on your display. And that’s exact-

ly as it should be. If we want to mess around with images, there are

plenty of controls elsewhere (including in the 752BD) that allow all

sorts of image accuracy mischief if you are bent on that sort of thing.

Playback of DVDs is one area where performance issues still differ-

entiate indifferent (usually cheaper) Blu-ray Disc players from the better

machines. It is not easy to make compressed-to-death DVD resolution

look fantastic on HD video displays. The 752BD has slightly different

video processing on the two HDMI outputs. HDMI 1 is the primary out-

put. If you set up the machine so that HDMI 1 sends video and HDMI 2

sends audio (or is not used at all), you’ll get the best possible image

quality from DVD, as this configuration option will process DVD images

through the Marvell Qdeo video processor. The 751BD was, I thought,

just a bit shy of the best DVD upconversion available at that time

(2011). It would appear in DVD images as a little extra softness and

graininess compared to the best DVD upconversion. But the 752BD

appears to be tweaked slightly so that it now matches the best DVD

upconversion I’ve seen short of Lumagen’s Radiance video proces-

sors, which still have a small edge. What you think of the DVD upcon-

version quality will have a lot to do with the transfer quality present on

the DVD in question. Some of them are just horrible to look at on HD

displays. For example, the DVD transfer of The Dark Knight is pretty

abysmal. Grainy, noisy, loaded with easily visible compression artifacts

in every frame, horrible looking aliasing on any lines that are anything

less than perfectly vertical or perfectly horizontal, and even moiré

artifacts at times. It’s pretty shameful that a major studio would release

a movie that looks that bad on DVD. On the other hand, the DVD ver-

sion of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol is among the best transfers

of live action to DVD that I can recall seeing. So if 10 people go out to

have a demo of the 752BD and half use TDK and the other half use

MI:GP, there are going to be very mixed reports about the relative

goodness or badness of the DVD upconversion. Nothing can fix the

problems in TDK, not even Lumagen’s mighty Radiance processors. It

looks terrible all the time. So choose your evaluation movies carefully if

you value DVD upconversion quality. Computer animation on DVD

looks so perfect through almost any disc player that you won’t learn

much from that either. The best choices are transfers that are some-

where in the middle… not too perfect, but not as bad as TDK.

The 752BD sailed through the torture tests on the HQV DVD

Benchmark evaluation disc, matching the performance of the best

Outputs - HDMI (2 on back), Composite (AV) (1 for diagnostics),

Stereo RCA analog (1), Eight Multichannel analog RCA (1), Coax

Digital (1), TOSLink optical (1), Ethernet 10/100 (1), Wireless N with

ncluded adapter (1),

nputs - HDMI (1 front, 1 back), USB (1 front, 2 back), Coax Digital

(

1), TOSLink optical (1), Wired IR input (1 back)

Features

Wolfson WM8740 24-bit, 192-kHz DACs, 10 channels for stereo

and multichannel analog

Brushed aluminum face plate

electable digital filters

K video upconversion option

D to 3D conversion option

lu-ray 3D support

aster disc loading and response to remote control commands

han previous generations

upports media streaming of many file formats including: AVCHD,

P4, AVI, MKV, WAV, FLAC

Support for network media playback (images, music, video)

MHL compatibility (connect compatible portable devices for media

playback and battery charging via HDMI)

RS-232 control port

D-Live and BonusVIEW support

EC AC power cord socket

ully backlit IR remote control

Direct access Web Apps for: YouTube; Picasa

Latest Marvell Qdeo Kyoto-G2H video processor

Anagram 24/192 upsampling for all 10 analog channels

Specifications

Power Requirements: 100-240 (VAC); 50 or 60 (Hz)

Power Consumption: Standby – 0.5 (watt, economy mode);

operating – 35 (watts)

Frequency response: not specified

Dynamic range: not specified

Signal-to-noise ratio: better than -108 dB (unspecified conditions)

Channel separation: better than -100 dB @ 1000 Hz (unspecified

conditions)

THD+Noise: less than 0.003% @ 1,000 Hz

Designed in: UK

Assembled in: China

Warranty: 3 years

Dimensions (WxDxH) – 16.9 x 12.3 x 3.3 (inch)

Weight – 11.0 lbs

MSRP – $1,299

Manufactured By:

Audio Partnership Plc

Cambridge Audio

Gallery Court

Hankey Place

London SE1 4BB

United Kingdom

Web site: www.cambridgeaudio.com

US Distributor:

Audio Plus Services

156 Lawrence Paquette Ind Drive

Champlain, New York 12919

Phone: 800 663 9352

Web site: www.audioplusservices.com

WidescreenReview.com • Issue 175 • March 2013

2/4

1 2 3 4

Comments to this Manuals

No comments

Cambridge Audio AZUR 751BD User Manual Page 2

Comments to this Manuals

Related products and manuals for Blu-Ray players Cambridge Audio AZUR 751BD