Cambridge Audio EXN100

The Cambridge Audio EXN100 is a network streamer from the EX series, sitting between the company’s entry models and its flagship Edge range.

It is a source component: no amplification, meant to feed an existing amplifier. Cambridge Audio’s StreamMagic platform handles the streaming, and the EXN100 uses the company’s own ESS-based conversion and analogue output stage.

What Apple Home actually does with it

This is an AirPlay 2 device rather than a HomeKit accessory.

• It appears in the Home app as a speaker you can play to, and as an AirPlay target in Control Centre.
• You can put it in a room and group it with HomePods for synchronised multi-room audio.
• Siri can send music to it by room name.
• It can be the audio output in a scene or an automation.

Power, input selection and volume stay with the unit, its remote and its own app. The Home app does not control those.

Before you buy

StreamMagic is a straightforward platform with good service support. It is not a multi-room system on the scale of BluOS, so if whole-house audio is the goal, AirPlay 2 with HomePods will do more of that work here.

A streamer belongs in a system where the amplifier and speakers are already right. If they are not, the Cambridge Audio Evo One does everything in one box instead.

Specifications