Cambridge Audio Melomania 1
Cambridge Audio’s focus has long been on sonic delivery over appearance, so ‘functional’ is perhaps the best that can be said about the Melomania 1s’ aesthetic.
The little in-ears snap reassuringly into their charging case with the aid of magnets, while another magnet keeps the case lid shut. The case is little bigger than a box of dental floss – ideal for slipping into your pocket – and features a set of five lights to indicate the battery charge level.
With nine hours’ battery life from the buds, plus four additional charges from the case, you have an impressive 45 hours of continuous use from this little set-up.
Cambridge Audio has taken great pains to emphasise its focus here: a quality sound experience. We stream Lewis Capaldi’s Grace at CD quality on Qobuz, and our head is immediately filled with a remarkable breadth of sound for a set of wireless earbuds.
Capaldi’s vocal is detailed, but there’s a playful ease to the dynamics here. We hear his intake of breath and the impending break in his voice as he belts out the chorus, without ever losing the spaces between the chords on the piano, the strum of the guitar or the crash of drums in the mix.
Everything is present and works harmoniously, with room to offer its sonic service to the whole. Similarly, when the music stops, it stops resolutely and with more precision than you’d expect. We feel suitably immersed in sound.
We stream Rod Stewart’s This from his 1995 album, A Spanner In The Works, and the subtle backing vocals, imperceptible through many wireless earbuds at this price, come through on the track.
The Melomania 1s offer insight to the point that we can hear when Stewart falters slightly. Slight deviances in pitch, where straining his voice to reach high notes, are also there. The Melomania 1s aren’t noise cancellers, so they cannot compete with the isolation offered by Sony’s WF-1000XS, for example. There’s also no dedicated app, and while this makes everything refreshingly simple when pairing, there is no scope for EQ alteration. Cambridge Audio has made good on its promise to save us from bad sound experiences and these Melomania 1 buds are certainly hard to beat at their price.
These budget-conscious in-ears offer a cohesive, expansive and rhythmically driven sound, but also an intuitive, spacious sonic presentation that few wireless earbuds can achieve for this money.