Classical, rock, and idle, respectively. I wish the idle were a little more sightly but I can’t figure out how to code it that way, so it is what it is.

And my Amazon review of my wonky receiver. It’s a little premature as it’s still kicking along, in my system waiting for the Toshiba to be cleaned and have other maintenance (1978 doesn’t sound that long ago but it’s a near 50-year-old unit, I had it in my system to know that it works). Still the review is final:

Cambridge Audio AXR100
2/5

Tl;dr: If you’re the kind of person to get bitten by the upgrade bug, you could do worse, but for people like me who buy an amp expecting to use it for at least a decade – really, the kind of person an all-in-one receiver like this is geared towards – it’s a remarkably poor value proposition. There won’t be many vintage AXR100s in 20 years.

Long: I bought this in 2021 when my preamp gave up the ghost after 19 years of service. Cambridge was one of the only options in my price range; it was and is remarkably hard to find a good preamp with an FM radio section, and this is non-negotiable. I also wanted something optimized for stereo rather than multiple channels I’d never use; I went with the AXR100 over the AXR85 to take advantage of the digital inputs (the fifteen extra watts is a marketing gimmick preying on people who don’t know how amplifier power works; it amounts to less than one extra decibel.)

Out of the box there was a problem with the power supply and I RMA’d the unit. The replacement was just as shoddy, only it died slowly over five years (it was six hundred bucks when I got it, which cost me $120/year). In less than two years all the digital inputs died, then the Speaker A outputs died, then I got an ever-loudening radio signal in the phono stage, and finally it developed a problem in the power supply that tripped the overload protection every other time you tried to turn it on. It seemed like something new broke every year. Then that was it.

Terrible QC on Cambridge’s part, and the fact that I went through two units and they were both duds concerns me. I went back to a separate pre/tuner (Emotiva BasX PT1 – requires separate amp, not a direct substitute) and power (a vintage unit off a rival platform I don’t think I’m allowed to mention, but that started off as an auction site.) I thought a major manufacturer at these prices would have rock-solid build quality but some boutique Chi-Fi tube gear from 20 years ago outdid this model. This will be the last time I buy from Cambridge Audio.