Cambridge Audio has long had a reputation for delivering high fidelity gear designed with British sensibilities of design and sound quality, but without the eye-watering price of some of its compatriot companies. And that looks to be the case with its new turntable, the Cambridge Audio Spira 1.
As always with lower cost turntables, I’m interested in both how it performs “out of the box”, and just as much how amendable it is to being upgraded.
About the Cambridge Audio Spira 1 turntable
Price: $699
Available: here
As befits its price, the turntable is almost no-frills, but as befits its seeming target market, it provides some useful beginner features.
It’s a fully manual, belt drive unit on an unsprung MDF plinth. There are quite substantial “Isolating rubber” feet. Nonetheless, like all turntables the Spira should be placed on a firm bench or shelf. A nice step up from the basics is the electronic speed control. Once you wrap the belt around the motor pulley and the sub-platter, and place the 1.8kg steel platter over the top, you won’t need to fiddle with it. A knob switches between off, 33⅓rpm and 45rpm.
The tone arm is properly equipped with a calibrated counterweight and antiskating control. Which means you can change the cartridge. Indeed, the supplied cartridge is fitted to a removeable headshell. The arm is straight, so while the headshell uses the standard SME style connector, the section to which the cartridge is attached is at an angle, rather than the straight line geometry of many.
The cue lever is nicely dampened – up as well as down. The arm has a quite low “effective mass” of 7.3 grams, perhaps a little unusual these days where the norm tends to be around 10-12 grams. This doesn’t matter unless you’re changing cartridges, in which case you should choose one to match.
The pre-fitted cartridge is the ubiquitous Audio-Technica AT3600L. It has a conical diamond stylus, and this variant is intended to track at around 3 grams, rather than the 2 grams of the AT3600. This is probably a wise choice for an entry-level turntable which may be presented with some difficult material. It ought to track more securely.
The Spira has a built-in switchable phono preamplifier, along with Bluetooth connectivity, so you’ve got a few connection choices. And there’s a proper lid on the unit.
Here are the manufacturer’s specifications:
- Wow and Flutter: < 0.15%
- Rotation Speed Variation: +3%/-2%
- Effective tonearm length: 8.6” (218.5mm)
- Effective mass: 7.3g
- Signal to noise: 60dB
- Dimensions (W x D x H): 418mm x 343mm x 122mm
- Weight: 5.95kg
- Power consumption: 5W
The turntable is available in black, white, blue, green or orange. Sadly, the review unit was black. If I were buying one, I’d definitely go for green or orange.
Setting Up the Cambridge Spira 1
Cambridge Audio says that “Every Spira arrives fitted and aligned, ready to play from day one.”
I took that as a challenge. Before even slicing open the box, I started my stopwatch. Sixteen and a half minutes later I had an LP spinning and music coming out of my speakers. Much of that time was spent just getting pesky plastic bags open. The quite small wall-wart had a Euro-plug on it, so I had to get the Australian plug out of another thoroughly sticky-taped package to fit it.
I only referred to the “Quick Start Guide” once: to check what stylus tracking pressure I should dial in. It was 3 grams. I checked the pressure with a Rega electronic stylus pressure gauge, and it proved to be accurate within 0.01 grams!
But I must complain. There should be decent set-up instructions in the box, not a little multi-lingual fold out card with illustrations.
I would be able to follow it, but I set up my first turntable over fifty years ago. I know how to balance a tone arm, then set the pressure, then adjust the antiskating. But for most people, especially first-time turntable purchasers, this is a weird process with an exotic and delicate piece of equipment. And if you don’t do it right it will damage, at least, the stylus and the record. So a bit of hand-holding is definitely in order.
In fact, the enclosed “Quick Start Guide” makes the process seem harder than it is because Step 3, which occupies two panels and four steps, is how to align the cartridge. If you download the proper manual from Cambridge Audio, this gets one little paragraph, which commences “6. (Optional, the cartridge comes pre-aligned out of the box)”. Good to know.
That manual is a little better. There’s also an official Cambridge Audio setup video, which is fun and informative, but still a little unclear (what exactly is he twisting at the back of the tone arm – there are two things there which are to be turned at different times).
You can also check out our article on How to Setup a Turntable. Just, with this turntable, skip “Step 4: Set up the cartridge”.
Listening to records with the Cambridge Audio Spira 1 turntable
We’ll get to Bluetooth in the next section, but for the most part I listened using this turntable the way you ought to: with it connected by wire. Part of the time was with the wire connecting its preamplifier to the line inputs on my system. And part was the raw cartridge signal via the various phono preamplifiers I mention below.
First, one characteristic that was common with all options: the signal was relatively low in noise, more resistant to low-level crackle and clicks and pops than I am used to. I normally use cartridges with an elliptical shape, sometime even narrower profiles. The conical stylus seemed less likely to notice surface imperfections.
Generally the sound with the built-in phono preamplifier was solid, with good upper bass and decent dynamics. It did seem to lack real depth on some tracks. I spent a lot of time spinning the track “Fifo” from Sky 2 on different combinations, and soon found that the deep bass returned when I skipped the built-in pre-amp and went to an external one. Likewise, there are some splashy cymbals in that track, and with the built-in pre-amp they were significantly too overdone. They were tamed somewhat by using an external pre-amplifier. I tried this track on a Technics SL-1500C running a Grado Gold4 cartridge, and this brought the whole thing back into balance.
I would have liked to try the Gold4 in the Spira, but the headshells are different shapes. Still, on paper the Grado Prestige cartridges, which have a quite high compliance specification – that means they’re quite springy, rather than stiff – should make an ideal match with the low-mass Spira tonearm.
The Grado cartridge also showed a dynamism well beyond that of the standard Spira turntable. Of course, that cartridge costs a large fraction of the cost of the Spira!
As I write, I’m currently listening to Glenn Gould playing the Liszt piano transcription of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, from an LP I bought some time in the 1980s. This was a noisy pressing, always a hazard of vinyl, but the clicks and pops aren’t intrusive in this playing on the Spira. There’s a fair bit of detail, including the print-through of the opening mighty notes of the first movement. The producers did a decent job on this one of suppressing Gould’s vocal accompaniments, but these are still audible. This is an extremely dry recording, with the piano dynamics captured well, and delivered remarkably well by the Spira. Nice.
The conical stylus couldn’t do much about the scratch that mars the opening of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, performed by Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, which I bought in the early 1970s, but as the music builds a few minutes in (and the scratch subsides), the Spira did a creditable job of conveying the growing urgency of the piece. The strings were smooth and the orchestra richly delivered. And the stylus played through the scratch without skipping or losing its place.
Moving to the 20th Century, I played the side two track “Beach Scene” from the 1980 Tangerine Dream soundtrack to the Michael Mann movie Thief. I already had the volume up fairly high for the previous record. The higher level of this one sounded magnificent. Sure, much of the sound was electronic rather than acoustic, but the stereo spread was very nicely handled, with precision and clear location of all the elements. The bass drum and synthed guitar were solid.
Let’s finish off with Uriah Heep’s psychedelically covered The Magician’s Birthday. No, not so much the kazoo-infected title track, but the one before it: “Tales”, my pick for the best track on the album.
Drums? Nice. They stand out from the mix and are well-located. The right-channel cowbell? Yep, there it is. Everything in there was properly revealed. The luscious layering was smoothly delivered while retaining the character of its elements.
I did all this listening using an extremely revealing sound system that was, price-wise, utterly inappropriate to the task: Simaudio Moon 330A power amplifier driving Dynaudio Contour 20i loudspeakers. Despite this, the turntable operated, unembarrassed, really rather nicely.
And with Bluetooth?
I happened to have the new premium Technics Bluetooth headphones – EAH-A1000 – to hand so I could mix technological centuries: Bluetooth wasn’t really thing before vinyl playback started on what then seemed to be its inevitable extinction. Vinyl’s resurgence has naturally meant the two technologies sometimes joining together in one device.
It took me a little while to get the headphones connected to the turntable. All you need do is switch on the Spira, switch on the little Bluetooth switch on the back, and put your listening gear into pairing mode. I did the first two and then went to get the headphones. By then, the flashing blue light on the back was steadily on. I should have realised, but that meant it had paired to something. Eventually I worked out that it had paired to a Bluetooth-capable DAC (which had been in standby mode). Once I powered off that device, pairing to the Technics headphones was easy.
In general, it sounded okay. I will confess that I do not typically listen to vinyl with Bluetooth headphones. Cambridge Audio doesn’t specify which audio codec is used, so I think we can assume it’s the standard Bluetooth SBC. The sound was flattened a little in its dynamics, and with a full bass and reserved treble. Not ideal for super-critical listening, but pleasant enough.
Except for one thing. The Bluetooth processor has some form of gating implemented. When the level of the sound falls below a certain point, it is muted quite aggressively and seemed to require a slightly higher level to come back on. So, when a track fades out to the inevitable noise and hiss before the next track, it would disconcertingly go absolutely silent for fractions of a second, then permit a click or pop through, then go silent again.
For example, on Barbra Streisand’s 1981 album Memories, this was quite clear between “New York State of Mind” and “No More Tears” at the end of Side One. Worse, that cutting in and out affected the quiet introduction at the start of “No More Tears”.
To be clear, there wasn’t any of this when I wired the turntable to my sound system, regardless of whether I used the Spira’s own phono preamplifier or set it to low level output and used my pre-amplifiers.
I should note that this is not an inevitable consequence of Bluetooth. I have an Audio-Technica Sound Burger, so I span up the same album, connected it to the Technics headphones and had a listen. There was no gating at all with that unit.
Finally, this is really only a problem with headphones. If for some reason you’re using a Bluetooth speaker, it’s unlikely to be noticeable over background room noise.
Upgrading the Cambridge Audio Spira
I do find it interesting that Cambridge Audio generally refers to this as the Spira 1 turntable. That suggests to me there may be a Spira 2 – or more – in their future. I wonder if it will be step-up turntable, or a refreshed one of a similar level.
That said, there’s ample room with this model for upgrading, should this introduction to vinyl convert you. The first and simplest change would be to change the stylus. The AT3600/3600L cartridges are very widely used. There’s one on the Sound Burger, but I’ve also seen a rebranded one pre-installed on a turntable costing more than $2,000. There are stylus options from both Audio-Technica and after-market vendors.
You could pop in the new ATN3600LE stylus, which is Audio-Technica’s recently released elliptical stylus for this cartridge. It still requires the same moderately high tracking force, so I wouldn’t recommend it. Lore from my youth was that elliptical styluses tracking at more than 2 grams can damage records.
Or the ATN91. It’s still got a conical stylus, but offers a more compliant suspension and is suitable for tracking at around 2 grams. If anything, it’s a better match for the very light tone arm. Because the arm has proper adjustments, you can rebalance it to match.
Or you can move up in the AT cartridge line. Just remember, with the lightness of this arm, it is not suitable for low compliance cartridges, such as the famed Denon DL-103/103R.
You could even consider running several different cartridges. If each is fitted to its own headshell, then swapping over only takes a moment to rebalanced the arm. If you’re getting more headshells, pick the right kind. I’ve encouraged Cambridge Audio to offer them as an accessory. Meanwhile, Cambridge tells me that the “Audio Technica AT-HS4 headshell fits the Spira” and it has been successfully tested with the step-up AT-VM95e cartridge.
I tried the turntable with a high-ish end Simaudio Moon 310LP phono pre-amp, with the moving magnet preamp built into an Advance Paris preamplifier, with a ProJect Phono Box (that was a nice cheap Cash Converters find!) and even with a Fosi Audio Box X5 MM/MC phono preamp. Each of them was a noticeable step up from the built-in phono preamp. For fun, I even tried it with the phono input on my ancient Cambridge Audio A1Mk3 Special Edition integrated amplifier. And I preferred that one.
The 310LP is overkill for this turntable, but if you have a moving magnet phono input on your active speakers or amplifier, give that a go and see what you like, or look at a lower-cost separate phono preamplifier.
A note on earthing. The included cable has a parallel earthing lead. But you may not need it. The outer part of the RCA sockets are connected to the earthing point on the turntable. If the same applies for your phono preamp connection, then the earthing will occur automatically.
Conclusion
The Cambridge Audio Spira is a very fine way to enter the world of true analogue music reproduction. Apart from Bluetooth, everything works as it should, sounds fine, and is amenable to upgrades that will make it even better.
