Cambridge Azur 640H... too good to be true?

I think they (CA) purposely design their all kit with a few flaws so they can bring out a V2 a month after you've spent your money :rolleyes:

Si
 
Installed 256mb DDR RAM today. As far as I can tell, there are little to no performance benefits with a small library like mine (8000 tracks). The menus are no faster than they were. A much larger library could possibly benefit from the extra memory but can't test that until it gets fillled up! I would also guess that the CA software has been designed with the 128mb memory limitation in the design requirements so maybe there its already as fast as its going to get??

Si
 
Hello

Anybody has upgraded the HDD for a bigger one?

I had just buy one Azur Music server last week.

bye
 
Hello,

A new version of the firmware was released on 23.04.2007

Version : 020181


Does anybody use it ?

Yep, and it works well. The navigation screens are now a lot faster. That said, I've had my unit 4 months now and never had any problems. It's a great piece of kit for the money, and sits very well with my CA amp and Digitall Radio, and works like a dream over wifi with my desktop PC (and laptop). I can recommend them!
 
Yep, and it works well. The navigation screens are now a lot faster. That said, I've had my unit 4 months now and never had any problems. It's a great piece of kit for the money, and sits very well with my CA amp and Digitall Radio, and works like a dream over wifi with my desktop PC (and laptop). I can recommend them!

For some reason all of the buttons on the front panel of the unit have stopped working on mine! I'm in conversation with CA at the moment to see why. Seemed to have stopped working after I upgraded a couple of weeks ago.

But I agree with you that it is a superb piece of kit. It goes well with my 640A.

But...I did not notice much of a difference with the nav screens. I probably need to use it a bit more to really notice. Plus I'm having a nightmare with placing it on my wifi network. I get it set up ok, but continue to get network conflicts (conflicting IPs etc). I really don't know how to fix it. Have tried everything including defining static IPs - with no luck.

But I'm going to stick with it and make it work!
 
Not sure what this thing can do that a Mac/iTunes and Airport Express cant:confused:

WMA support is I guess the on paper difference. It is also sonically better and best of all you don't have to buy an Apple Mac.
 
Hey Guys,

New Poster Here. I've just purchased the 640H with the lastest patch 02.01.81 installed. Anyway I have it networked to my PC and can transfer files across to the 640H with no issue! the MAJOR issue comes when I rescan the hard drive. I made a Playlist with roughly 2000 tracks on because I use the system in a pub, after the rescan it decided to lose all the playlist tracks (which now show as missing files) this playlist took me bloody ages cause the system is so slow. I thought the patch was supposed to stop this from happening. Can any one of you fine fellows shed any light on the matter.:lease:
 
Hmm, the more I read about the mishaps/problems with this machine,
the less inclined I am to buy it.

However, let me ask a really dumb question while I'm here - does your PC have to be "On" for the music to be streamed wirelessly to the 640H? :confused:

I'm thinking "Yes", but just wanted to check. :rolleyes:

Cheers ... soulboy (need to have another look at the Hifidelio threads!!)
 
Hmm, the more I read about the mishaps/problems with this machine,
the less inclined I am to buy it.

However, let me ask a really dumb question while I'm here - does your PC have to be "On" for the music to be streamed wirelessly to the 640H? :confused:

I'm thinking "Yes", but just wanted to check. :rolleyes:

Cheers ... soulboy (need to have another look at the Hifidelio threads!!)

I wouldn't be put off, Soulboy. It really is fantastic value for money. And yes, you would need to keep your PC swtiched on as it needs the data from the PCs hard disc. For the networking, buy a DLINK Ethernet bridge (about £50 online) - a doddle to set up and configure. I had my 640H talking to my desktop PC within 10 minutes of opening the package the Ethernet bridge was supplied in!

Cheers

Roy
 
Plus I'm having a nightmare with placing it on my wifi network. I get it set up ok, but continue to get network conflicts (conflicting IPs etc). I really don't know how to fix it. Have tried everything including defining static IPs - with no luck.

But I'm going to stick with it and make it work!

What bridge setup are you using? If you setup a static IP on the 640H without altering both the settings on your bridge and router, it will almost certainly fail (sorry if this is bleedin' obvious;) )

Have you tried "reserving" an IP on your router for the 640H? I had the same problems with my Netgear wifi Skype phone a couple of weeks back and the reserved IP route solved the problem, so I went and did the same for each wifi device I have including the 640H.

Just a thought.

Cheers

Roy
 
Have you tried "reserving" an IP on your router for the 640H? I had the same problems with my Netgear wifi Skype phone a couple of weeks back and the reserved IP route solved the problem, so I went and did the same for each wifi device I have including the 640H.

Can you give me more info on this please? I set all my gear up (router, PC, 640H, ethernet bridge, g/f's laptop) and all works ok for a little bit. Then an IP conflict error pops up and I lose my internet connection. Frustrating to say the least!
 
Fixed in the latest update, available for download now.

the system i brough had the latest patch already installed and this did not rectify the problem, I've e.mailed CA with no response and by looking at the threads I don't expect one.

Regretting this purchase.

james
 
the system i brough had the latest patch already installed and this did not rectify the problem, I've e.mailed CA with no response and by looking at the threads I don't expect one.

Regretting this purchase.

james

Did you contact them via the support area of their website? And did you realise that the person who responded to your prior post here (Adam Shaw) works at CA?

I've always had good responses from CA using the support part of their site. In fact I had an issue with the latest update which appears to be a hardware issue. They are going to send me a replacement part. I couldn't ask for better support than this.

Finally you say you are regretting this purchase. And you also mention that your 640H already had the latest update installed on it. Given the update has only been out 3 weeks or so, are you sure you've given the unit enough time to make that call? Setting these sort of things up is always a pain in the butt, but if you can perservere I think you'll find it is a superb piece of kit.

Good luck.
 
Yeah, I guess that CA are not the huge corp. that Panasonic or Denon are so in trying to be innovative at a price point is going to lead to some teething issues. Look at Arcam and their DVD players - they weren't exactly the most reliable of things, but now they seem to be okay. The fact that CA are trying to do all this at pricepoints much lower than the likes of Arcam or Hifidello is also to be commended and supported here possible.

It's not like CA have said: "Ah, well, we'll fix everything in the next hardware issue." As a comparison, look at Pioneer and the 10db issue on their amps, and this is a far bigger company with much more resources to deploy.

Russell
 
Did you contact them via the support area of their website? And did you realise that the person who responded to your prior post here (Adam Shaw) works at CA?

I've always had good responses from CA using the support part of their site. In fact I had an issue with the latest update which appears to be a hardware issue. They are going to send me a replacement part. I couldn't ask for better support than this.

Finally you say you are regretting this purchase. And you also mention that your 640H already had the latest update installed on it. Given the update has only been out 3 weeks or so, are you sure you've given the unit enough time to make that call? Setting these sort of things up is always a pain in the butt, but if you can perservere I think you'll find it is a superb piece of kit.

Good luck.

Satch,

Thanks for that response, I,m positive the system I brought has the latest patch on as it says it in the settings and when I tried to install and ISO file just in case it stated there is no need for an update. The 640H is networked to my Win XP machine using a Rangemax Netgear Router and transfering the files over is not a problem (great in fact) however when I do a rescan on the 640H to add the files to the HD, some of the tracks from the playlists show as missing files, its so damn annoying because I need playlists for the bar this machine will go into.

I was using the support area on CA website and Adam Shaw did respond once, then its all gone very quiet, if it is a hardware problem then can someone from CA tell me so. THen we can resolve this issue and I can get on with using this tasty piece of kit.

Thanks Rant over.
 
Hi Jesse, are you sure that the tracks that show up as missing files are actually on the 640H? A playlist will show all the tracks that have been added to it, regardless of location, i.e available via an external device or from a netwroked PC as well as the internal HDD, but, when that location is no longer available, i.e the networked PC is switched off you will get the missing tracks message, even they still show as present in the playlist. You get the same thing in the main music libarary, i.e if you have the 640H configured to look in 2 locations, but 1 is unavailable you still see the album info etc, but if you try and play a track it won't.
 
Hi Jesse, are you sure that the tracks that show up as missing files are actually on the 640H? A playlist will show all the tracks that have been added to it, regardless of location, i.e available via an external device or from a netwroked PC as well as the internal HDD, but, when that location is no longer available, i.e the networked PC is switched off you will get the missing tracks message, even they still show as present in the playlist. You get the same thing in the main music libarary, i.e if you have the 640H configured to look in 2 locations, but 1 is unavailable you still see the album info etc, but if you try and play a track it won't.

Oh Crap! I thought when you dragged the files from you PC and did a rescan on the 640H it automatically added the files to the hard drive on the 640H? or am I doing this completely wrong and I hang my head in shame :suicide:
 
.....And yes, you would need to keep your PC swtiched on as it needs the data from the PCs hard disc......

That's not strictly true in all cases. It depends on how you use your 640H and where you store your music.

If you store your music on your PC and use the 640H as a high quality streaming device, then you, you Do need you pc on.

However, the intention, I guess, is that you store your music on the 640H's hard disk and then you do NOT need your PC on. This is how I use mine - I'm up to 110GB and everything works very smoothly. I use my PC to download music and then copy across tot he 640H and then a simple rescan pulls all the tracks into the 640H library. then PC off and all the music is still fully available.

I used to use the 640H as a streaming device, buy wifey got ****** at having the PC whirring away int he study when I was hogging the lounge !!

Hope this helps.
 
Oh Crap! I thought when you dragged the files from you PC and did a rescan on the 640H it automatically added the files to the hard drive on the 640H? or am I doing this completely wrong and I hang my head in shame :suicide:

You ARE correct. you are not doing anything wrong.

Actually what happens is when you drag the files from your PC to the 640H you are doing just that...copying the files across.
At this point the 640H will not include them in the database and therefore from the 640H menus, these new files are not yet available.

When you do a rescan (you know the 'pause/break' key takes you to the rescan page in one keypress? ...if you use a keyboard, of course ;-) ) then the files are scooped up and then you can access them.

There is another way of doing this that I kind-of like and use more frequently and this is more efficient if you have loads of music on the 640H itself....

Here's what I do....
On my PC, I move all the 'new' music to a folder called, say, NEW and I share this as NEW.

Then in the 640H I add a location called NEW and direct the 640H to this folder.
1st time you'll be asked to scan, thereafter you'll need to rescan - but ONLY rescan the NEW location. This'll generally be very quick if you have only added a few 10s of albums. Mega quick if only a couple of albums.

Then on the 640H go to "Send to" with only NEW lcoation selected (select sources quickly using the Insert key) and send it to the hard drive.

Following this approach means that the NEW files get transfered (together with any album art files that were on the PC in NEW folder too - neat) but the real benefit (if you're still reading this far...) is that you DO NOT need to rescan the whole of your hard drive, making this process pretty damned fast. Seems that letting the 640H do the copying automatically appends the info in its database. Obvious really. :cool:

Comparing the two methods,....both copy the files across (pretty much the same speed), but the scanning (in my case, at least) is so much slicker.

Took me a while to find this method, but now this is the way I work.

Once the 640H has "collected" all the new stuff, you can re-file/delete the music from the PC folder NEW....it's then residing on the 640H

Next time you want to add stuff, on the pc siimply put the music in NEW and rescan and "Send to" again. simple.




Hope this helps....and apologies for the long post ;-(
 
the system i brough had the latest patch already installed and this did not rectify the problem, I've e.mailed CA with no response and by looking at the threads I don't expect one.

Regretting this purchase.

james

I also had a problem with playlists being messed up, and I couldn't understand what was going on, so had a play around.

On "not the latest" software, then yes, playlists would get screwed on a rescan.

With the latest version, then the CA guy IS right - it does seem to be fixed.

I initially though this was bo//ocks, but found that if I did a rescan BEFORE putting on the new software, then the playlist would be screwed, and the new software would not ressurect the dead playlist and make it fine (that's be reasonable, imho; once screwed-always screwed).

I've got my 640H now running the latest software and for playlists created with this version, I can freely rescan and the playlist remains perfect.

For the playlist manager (if that's what they call it), it's a case of if it WAS screwed then it can't be put right, but the new software version handles things fine if the new software was used to create the playlist.
 

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