I had the Azur 851Cs predesessor, it was great, used it for 15 years, I bought the 851c because the 841 developed a small fault, later easily fixed... Anyway I was usekng a 1000euro preamp with the 841c, and to begin with continued with it, I then tried the internal DSP preamp kn the 851c... WOW! Detail, SoundStage and Pressence ALL took a very noticeable increase in quality... Fantastic Player... why are Cambridge phaseing it out?.. things I would loved to have added, headphone output and DSP Tone Controls.

I purchased this player a few months ago requiring a dedicated CD player after using a Blu-Ray player for awhile. Many years ago I owned the predecessor to the Azur 851C, the Azur 840C back in 2009. It was an excellent unit but had to sell it after awhile due to financial constraints at that juncture.
Fast forward to this year and after having "burned in" the 851C for about 50 to 60 hours initially...the sound began to even out...the balance between the frequency ranges established...very solid and wide soundstage but with clarity and detail.
I think it's critical to get at least 100 hours in before true critical listening can be done...the sound settles improves exponentially.
Build quality and finish is the excellent, my only quibble is the tray mechanism...it feels very light weight and it's not as smooth as I feel it should be when looking at the solid build of the chassis and overall solidity of the player. My tray vibrates quite a bit when closing...perhaps Cambridge could let me know if this can be remedied.
Feature set is still very good...considering the player was introduced in 2012, digital inputs, XLR, Co-ax, AES, USB and balanced and single ended outputs.
I definitely recommend this player for sound, overall solidity and build quality and the flexibility as a digital Pre-Amp and DAC.

I bought this player a few years ago and use(d) it mainly as a cd-player. This player changes sound into musicality, that's for sure.. what I discovered lately is that the digital pre-amp is very good, actually, after a very good support of the Cambridge Audio support-team I even found out that I can use the RCA output to drive an active subwoofer whilst the XLR output goes directly to the power amp. great feature ! I also use the usb input, connected with the laptop and the driver downloaded from the Cambridge Audio-site and it works flawless, only good points for this unit, it's a keeper

Good evening, please, what small active speakers would fit this CD player? The room where I have a bike simulator is about 4 x 3 meters. Well thank you.