Those of you paying attention will know that we reall y rate Arcam's new A19 stereo amplifier. A welcome return to the top of the recommendations from a fresh design from their original guru and designer, John Dawson. Well that has been the first fruit of major investment in other new products and platforms.
The new platform is their av amplifier range. It is no secret that the fast moving market in av can be tricky for a specialis t company that thrives on a performance advantage. Keeping ahead of the major players such as Denon, Yamaha, Onkyo is easy in terms of sound quality, but the switching and formats move so fast that you have to be sure that the investment in a new platform will keep you ahead of the pack for a few years. HDMI is already up to 1.4a, 3D added, and the next technology on the horizon is 4k video. What is 4k will be a future Reference subject and video so I'm not going further just now. Suffice to say that by next year every new amplifier will need to have it.
Arcam have a new range of 3 amplifiers which tick every known box, and the upgradeable platform means that unknown boxes can also be ticked in the future.
AVR750, AVR450, and AVR380 are the new models. All feature 7.1 DTSHD and DolbyHD processing, 7 HDMI inputs, 2 HDMI outputs, 6 analogue inputs, 4 digital inputs, 2 optical inputs, FM tuner, DAB on top 2 models, streaming music support, free Songbook App, and 4K HD ultra video scaling. That should be enough for anyone!
AVR 750 has arrived first and is currently playing as I type. It's £ 4000, top-of-the-range, and sounds superb. I have it driving a pair of Kef R700s and it really makes music. This is one of Arcam's strengths, that an av amp is also great on music. Some would also enquire if an amp isnt good on music how can it be any good on movies? And that is a good point! The best amps must be able to do both, and in my experience there are few that do both really well.
To follow in August is the AVR450. Lower power than the 750 but using the same switching platform the 450 will sell for £ 2200. Completing the line up at £ 1500 will be the AVR380 in September.
So how do we summarise this?
Put simply, Arcam's new range will be the market leader and the first choice for anyone looking at facilities, high performance, and future-proofing.
It puts Arcam back on top!
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