Cambridge Audio iD50 - the ultimate dock for your iPod (From The Northern Echo)

Cambridge Audio iD50 - the ultimate dock for your iPod

6:38pm Wednesday 18th August 2010 in

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THE iPod is a wonderful device but nothing beats playing your music on a real hi-fi.

Even the very best headphones can't hope to reproduce the bass notes and clarity you will get from a decent amplifier and speakers.

Until now, the easiest way to connect your iPod to an amp was to use a simple phono/jack socket interconnect. But that meant plugging an ugly looking cable into your iPod and hoping no one knocked it off, trod on it or sat on it depending where you left it.

Cambridge Audio, the British-based audio specialists who design and sell a range of quality hi-fi separates via Richer Sounds, sells a couple of audio docks that will keep your precious player safe and sound.

this dock sucks every drop of quality out of an iPod

Nigel Burton

Both the iD10 and the iD50 look cool and classy with a slot on top for your iPod and outputs on the back for connecting to a hi-fi.

That’s about it as far as the iD10 is concerned - it's a neat and sensible alternative to the cable connection but the sound you get is much the same.

The iD50, however, has one or two tricks up its sleeve to justify its £99 price.

Cambridge says the weighty dock includes "quasi differential noise cancelling circuits" to clean up the sound before piping it through audiophile-quality output buffers into your sound system.

I was sceptical. The world of hi-fi is full of bizarre claims and "snake oil" technologies said to improve the sounds you hear. For instance, I've never understood why anyone would pay nearly a hundred quid for an HDMI lead when a decent £10 cable will do the job just as well.

So would I hear any difference between the iD50 and the iD10?

First impressions were that the iD50 does offer more features for your money.

You can use it to transmit videos from an iPod to a TV, there’s a full featured remote and it has an advanced on-screen display system that can adjust every aspect of your iPod via a big telly.

But what about the sound?

Listening to the same track back-to-back the iD50 was a revelation compared to its cheaper cousin.

Although fine in isolation (and every bit as good as a cable connection) the iD10's output sounded thin and the bass notes curiously muffled when they up against the iD50's fancy outputs.

I'm still not sure what "quasi differential noise cancelling" filters do. However, I did manage to find a patent for a quasi-stationary noise cancellation system which analyses a noise pattern than automatically subtracts it from a signal.I suspect the iD50 is doing something similar.

But there's no denying that this dock sucks every drop of quality out of an iPod bringing tracks to life on a hi-fi like never before.

I've always felt MP3 (and its iPod cousin AAC) sounded a little brittle played through my hi-fi set-up. Connected via an iD50, however, it was hard to distinguish my iPod’s music from the original CD.

If you are a serious music lover I reckon the iD50 is a must-have purchase.

*CAMBRIDGE AUDIO iD50 iPOD DOCK. Price: £99.

Available from Richer Sounds (www.richersounds.com)