Cambridge Alva TT Bluetooth Turntable

Read our detailed review here: bit.ly/2GJzyb6
Purchase the Alva TT: http://bit.ly/2TZZtOy

For the first time, Cambridge is releasing a turntable of their own, the Alva TT. Following their pattern of innovation, Cambridge added a feature to their turntable that has long been taboo in the world of HiFi audio...Bluetooth. After hearing about the Alva TT and its “Best of Audio” award at the 2019 CES, we were excited to get our hands on Cambridge's new AptX HD turntable and run it through some tests.

Upon initial inspection, the Alva TT looks simplistic and sleek. The looks of the Alva TT are reminiscent of Cambridge’s other (somewhat) minimalistic designs, like the Edge A and others. The non-technical design is seemingly a statement of “let the sound speak for itself.”

On the surface of the Alva TT are the four turntable essentials:

The Plinth - Constructed of brushed and black aluminum and weighs nearly 20 pounds to keep vibration resonance to a minimum.

The Tonearm - Cambridge calls this a “British Made Single Piece Tonearm,” which appears to be made by another popular British turntable company. It’s light and strong with a smooth bearing, and tracks very well.

The Platter - Constructed of very dense material called Polyoxymethylene (POM), a high-
tech engineering thermoplastic used in precision parts that require high stiffness and
excellent dimensional stability. The Platter is quite hefty and carries very little vibrations.

The Cartridge- Cambridge developed their own custom Moving Coil cartridge (the Alva MC) to perfectly match their tonearm and the specifications of their internal preamp.

Despite the Cambridge Alva’s classic look, it’s packed with features that set it apart from any tables on the market. The Alva TT is made for the listener that loves the tactile feel, sound, and look of vinyl, with the convenience of modern technology.

Cambridge designed the Alva TT with a few innovative features: AptX HD Bluetooth, a preinstalled high-quality Moving Coil cartridge, a built in MC phono stage, direct drive, and simple setup. We cover these features in great detail in our written review on our blog.

Cambridge made this turntable as simple as possible to set up. Once you pull it out of the box, all you have to do it set on the platter and attach the counter weight and you’re ready to connect to your system. You can connect to an amp via RCA or set up the Bluetooth on your connected device. For our setup, we connected to the Edge NQ, which has AptX HD bluetooth capabilities. It’s as simple as pressing the Bluetooth button on the Alva TT and selecting it on the device you’re pairing to. If you’re connecting to a Bluetooth device that doesn’t have a menu, such as Bluetooth headphones, the Alva TT will automatically connect to the discoverable device.


On our full setup of the Cambridge Edge stack and Bowers and Wilkins 803 D3 Floorstanding speakers, we started by connecting via Bluetooth. Over AptX HD Bluetooth, this was an impressive system. It sounded similar to the quality of Hi-Res streaming through Tidal or Qobuz, but with some of the qualities associated with vinyl like warmth and the sound of the stylus drop. Overall, the AptX HD surprised us and we wouldn’t have anticipated it sounding as high quality as it did. For Bluetooth, it had clear bass resolution, great staging, and surprising detail.

When we connected the Alva TT via RCA, we had the same great sound, but with slightly more detailed bass and better resolution.

When connecting the AudioEngine HD6 powered bookshelf speakers with AptX HD, the gap between RCA and Bluetooth started to thin. While the sound difference isn’t indistinguishable, the Alva TT’s Bluetooth sounds pretty close to an RCA connection. The AptX HD on the ALVA TT sounds much better than the Bluetooth from an iPhone streaming any format.

Our final test included AptX HD Bluetooth headphones, the Sony WH1000XM2 over-ear headphones. This is a very cool and useful use of the AptX HD feature. The Bluetooth range gives you the option to be on the other side of the room and still listen to your album through headphones. This also gave us an opportunity to get a sense of the Bluetooth range, which allowed us to go to a complete other room and still maintain signal. The sound had the same sound signature and qualities as it did when connected to the Bowers and Wilkins setup.

Overall, the sound of the Cambridge Alva TT was beyond what we expected a Bluetooth turntable to be capable of. While vinyl’s sound will naturally be more detailed when connected via RCA, the AptX HD is a convenient and high-quality solution. If you’re looking for a wired or wireless setup, and want a simple, exceptional sounding turntable, the Alva TT is a great pick.

Music: Ryan Little