Thanks for the vote of confidence
@Bloom@83 !
I'm glad that you found the sound to be musical and well balanced. It is always reassuring to know what I am hearing as "good sound" is not restricted to my belief alone.
Welcome to the Club!
If we were to draw a venn diagram, 99% of hi-fi'ers describing their next amp/speaker would fall into this cluster.
From what I've seen on the forum, FMs using a combination of Evo 4.2 and Audiolab 6000a love it since they have great synergy.
This should come as no surprise - both Wharfedale and Audiolab are related concerns with the same ownership.
While designing and tuning the sound of stereo amps for the hifi market, designers take into account how a particular amp plays with speakers more or less of the same price range (interviews and videos of Andrew Jones, Paul from PS Audio, Matthias Carstens, head of RME Audio development have great insights into how they go about designing speakers and amps). It would be unreasonable to expect amp designers to have tried out every single speaker in the price category and they'd mostly test their amps with what they have at hand. Guess what was readily available for the chaps at Audiolab?
The Wharfedale Evo is excellent at detail retrieval and goes about delivering it in an unforced manner. Its Treble leans towards the "dry" side of proceedings and its Tweeter seems designed intentionally to have narrow dispersion i.e. the speakers won't sound bright in an untreated room or when placed close to a boundary. As per this design philosophy, detail retrieval and stereo imaging for the Evo 4.2s are at its maximum on axis i.e. when the Tweeters are directly facing your ears.
The Evos are speakers which love to play to their strengths. They also have an unhurried nature i.e. the bass is good in quantity, definition and depth but not the fastest. Therefore, music with bass notes that have a natural decay are reproduced wonderfully while not particularly in their comfprt zone when playing bass which is extremely fast and starts and stops at a dime, especially tracks in the Electronic Genre.
The Cambridge Audio CXA81 has good attack and is a dynamic amp. From what I've heard from users of Rega, they share many similar traits though the tonality differs. However, such amps with a primary focus on attack and dynamics may not be the best match for the Evo 4.2 which is already very good at detail retrieval. Coupled with its affinity towards a relaxed bass presentation, the Evo tends to give a bright (though not sibilant) presentation which loses out on warmth.
To my mind, you should ideally get amps which do not have a presentation that is on the brighter side or for that matter, an amp with a primary focus on detail and attack. And you needn't, because the Evo is already a maestro in digging up the last dredges of it, even from basic budget amps.
From my experience with the Evo 4.2s, they have great synergy with amps which are either neutral or lean towards the warmer side of neutral. My Evos have better synergy with my Marantz PM6006 and SR6013 than the CXA81 though the latter is clearly the more accomplished amplifier while driving the Evos. It took me a great deal of experimentation with positioning, mixing and matching room treatment (absorption, diffusion and what not) and DACs to get a good sound while driving the Evos with the CXA81. With my Marantz amps which lean towards the warmer side of proceedings, they sounded just right!
