Anyone had any experience with this amp? - i've read some great reviews in mags, but reading some forum stuff, there's a few out there who don't rate it. Generally i'd be playing some jazz through it, a bit of rock (not heavy though) and folky stuff. Does anyone know of an amp that is better than the 640 for the price?

cheers

It's a really decent entry-level amp - defintely worth it for the price. You'll get a nice big warm sound from it which is fine for most things - for jazzy stuff it would probably suit very well...

Thanks Al. Do you know if the 640A would work well with my old Yamaha CDX-496? That's what I'd probably pair it with.

I'm guessing it will. The 640A is meant to be a pretty accommodating amp. Anyone had any experience with the CDX-496?

There's a review on the site actually... not too complementary I'm afraid:
http://www.avreview.co.uk/review/reviewproduct/mps/ProdID/607/RER/1/v/2
But I'd agree with Al that the 640A is friendly enough..... only one way to find out....

How come the cambridge 640a is an entry level amp when the price is £250 and theres a lot of cheaper cambridges under this mark?
Whats the next stage up, do you have to buy a really expensive amp to gain more detail?

I owned a Yamaha CDX-396 MkII... I guess that the 496 is not much better...

The 396 as a transport is fine, but the DACs are poor... Since you will be pairing them with analog connection, the relatively week DACs on the 496 will be the bottleneck... maybe if you are able to add an external DAC latter, you might get better results. From what I've heard, the 640A is a nice sounding machine