There's far more to Arcam than their popular range of hi-fi separates. David Price tells their intriguing story, and interviews company founder John Dawson.

It all started in John Dawson's room at Trinity College, Cambridge back in 1971. With his friend Brian Whitnall, John began making amplifier modules for friends. When classical guitarist John Williams visited the town to play Rodrigo's Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, he needed reliable live amplification which sounded great. John duly obliged. When Brian subsequently moved away, John met Chris Evans at a Tape Recording Society meeting.

In 1975 the two friends decided to make a hi-fi amplifier together, and the A&R A60 was born in September 1976. The Amplification and Recording Company (Cambridge) became a limited company in February 1977, when they'd sold about 50 amplifiers. To their delight, it was still going strong 32,000 units and ten years later! 

With sound as good as the best British competition and build quality as high as the Japanese, it was a deserved success. It sounded great, but its killer punch was its combination of copper-bottomed reliability and carefully judged features. 

There were many amplifiers around that offered one or maybe two of these qualities, but few served them all up together so consistently. By marrying simple but effective circuit design with high quality build, A&R successfully made Britain's 'affordable audiophile' niche their own. 

A certain Noel Keywood was one of the first journalists to champion the A60 back in 1977, and his enthusiasm spread like wild-fire in the UK hi-fi press. Initially selling for £115 plus VAT, its smooth and punchy sound gave rivals like Sugden's A48 a very hard time. Every British hi-fi magazine soon agreed that it was a superb product, even if one or two journalists didn't quite warm to its looks - Hi-Fi Answers described its styling as 'a modest piece of solid British ugliness - hideous'! 

BUILDING ON SUCCESS
By the late seventies the A60 was Britain's mid-price reference amplifier, A&R having established itself as a major player in the new British audio industry which included the likes of Linn, Naim, Meridian and Mission. The matching £190 T21 tuner soon followed a couple of years later, and then the £655 C200/SA200 pre-power combination. 

Offering extensive facilities, 100W RMS per channel and a neat wood sleeve it was a fine amplifier, but still struggled in the crowded, Naim-dominat-ed high end market. A&R surprised everyone again in 1981 by introducing a range of phono cartridges offering exactly the same magic formula as the original A60 amp. 

The £14.95 C77, £39.90 P77 and £69.00 P78 were A&R designed, Japanese built cartridges using interchangeable styli, making for an easy and inexpensive upgrade path. With medium (6g) mass and a characteristically rich and powerful sound they worked happily in budget and high end tonearms alike. 

The C77 featured a standard spherical stylus on an aluminium cantilever, the P77 a Weinz Paroc (parabolic oval cone) and the P78 added a Boron cantilever. All cartridges became instant hits and the C77 and P77 went on to sell in vast quantities, being joined by a mid range E77 brother and finally gaining a solid Magnesium body in place of the flimsy standard plastic item. 

Next A&R set its sights on loudspeakers, and the Arcam One was born. An expensive (£299) high quality stand-mounter, it featured an A&R designed, Elac-sourced 200mm Cobex mid/bass unit and an A&R modified 25mm Vifa tweeter. The crossover was by-passable, meaning the speaker could be used in active mode using A&R electron-cs.

Despite a slightly boomy bass, the Ones were extremely capable performers with fine stereo imaging, detailed sound-staging and a sweetly engaging musical performance. Strangely enough though they failed to capture buyers' imaginations like the A60 had, and became something of a well kept secret.

MASS APPEAL
By 1984 budget superamps were setting the nation's dem rooms alight, the most remarkable of which was the NAD 3020. Although the A60 sounded better, many buyers were happy to spend more on an expensive source and make do with a decent budget amplifier. A&R responded by moving downmarket, adopting the snappier 'Arcam' name and launching a range of 'budget audiophile' products, the first of which was the Arcam Alpha amplifier.

Offering the usual array of facilities (including, unfashionably, tone controls) for £130, the new amp soon won many friends. Its garish moulded plastic fascia got a Design Centre Award, and the high quality build made it popular with dealers. 

This was, lest we forget, a time when many British cottage industry manufacturers displayed appaling quality control! Sound was superb for the money - indeed one magazine proclaimed it better than the A60!

Up to 1986 the A60 had been quietly upgraded every couple of years with circuit mods, a change from DIN to RCA phono connectors, a better phono stage and beefier components, but new rivals such as Audiolab's 8000a were taking ever more sales. 

Arcam took the difficult decision to replace it with the bottom of the new range of mid-price separates, the Delta 60. With its clean black design it was the epitome of eighties hi-fi chic, but the sound wasn't distinguished enough to win the critical acclaim its pre-decessor had once enjoyed.

PLAYING THE BIT PART
Summer 1987 saw the first truly modern Arcam product, the £499.90 Delta 70 CD player. The company's first digital offering, it reflected Arcam's commitment to the new format in a number of ways. Being the first British company to hold a full CD manufacturing licence (costing a cool $25,000 at the time), the 70 was more than just a Meridian MCD-style re-skin of a Philips player. 

True enough, it did use their classic multibit chipset and CDM4 transport, but boasted all-discrete analogue circuitry and custom master clock. The results were spectacular, the player beating even the king of mid-price players, Marantz's classic CD94 in musicality terms.

Arcam were on a roll. Next came the Black Box in February 1989, the first separate digital to analogue converter. It was spectacularly successful (for a short while) thanks to the sweet Philips multibit sound it brought to middling Japanese players equipped with digital outputs.

Then the Delta 170 transport arrived, offering Philips' seminal CDM1 Mk2 diecast aluminium
transport, extensive internal damping and Audioquest Sorbothane feet. With a rich warm sound, it was the only CD transport around good enough to compete with Kenwood's pioneering DPX-9010.

The next few years saw the Alpha and Delta ranges rationalised and developed. An Alpha CD player was launched, offering sweet 'British sound' on a budget, while the Delta 250/Black Box 50 took
over the company's high end mantle. 

Arcam shocked the industry once again in 1992 with the £850 Delta 100 cassette deck. Just as the format was enjoying its last hours in the sun, this Dolby S equipped product complete with a superb Nakamichi-quality transport gave it a new lease of life. Unfortunately though the timing was all wrong, and the D100 joined ranks of hi-fi's great enigmas.

PLAY FOR TODAY
Since then Arcam has gone from strength to strength. In 1996 the Alpha 7 CD player did it all over again, introducing swoopy styling and class-leading sound quality to the budget market. In keeping with Arcam's modular upgrading philosophy first seen all those years ago with the 77 cartridge range, the 7 also boasts a comprehensive upgrade path. For £200 it can be upgraded to 8SE spec, bringing greater weight, depth and precision to the sound plus useful HDCD compatibility.

The Alpha 9 is also something of a milestone. From technology pioneered by Cambridge Consultants for military use, it uses a 24bit DCS 'Ring DAC', said to offer the advantages of both multibit and
bitstream in one chip. It's a musically convincing player and an essential audition at £799, not to mention as a £350 upgrade from the 8SE. 

Considering its formative role in UK CD player design and interest in tuners stretching back to the 1970s, Arcam's Alpha 10 DAB tuner should come as no surprise. The first British hi-fi DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) tuner to reach the market, it makes a great case for the new format.

The combination of the Roke Manor Research decoder and bespoke Arcam electronics makes for an extremely pleasant sounding, versatile and easy-to-use unit. At £799 it's an expensive way to listen to the radio, but will doubtless become a future classic.

Arcam devotees may view the new FMJ ('full metal jacket'?) series as some-thing of a curiosity. The company's traditionally sober styling - often obscuring constant engineering development work
underneath - has been abandoned for sumptuous extruded aluminium fascias, machined control knobs and tough steel casework.

It's an effective restyle which finally gives Arcam products the looks to match its engineering. The new £999.99 FMJ 22 amplifier looks far more arresting than the old A&R A60 ever did, but in many ways revives its elusive blend of sweet sound, extensive facilities and future compatibility. 

Featuring a dot-matrix display and intelligent internal bus, it offers the MARC (multi area remote control) module option giving multi-room facilities. There's also Arcam's DAVE (digital audio video entertainment) option, which when hooked up to a 3-channel P25 power amp gives full 5.1 channel Dolby Digital and dts surround sound. 

TOMORROW'S WORLD?
One of the few consistently successful British hi-fi companies, Arcam has been known to produce the occasional oddball product, but most of its designs hit the mark most of the time. Perhaps that's why the company has watched so many of its rivals come and go while it remains at the top. 

Although mainstream hi-fi separates might not be the sexiest game in town, it's an amazing achievement to find a British company with such an enduringly strong and successful presence. Of that, they - and we - can be proud. 

DP: What's the essence of Arcam?

JD: Enthusiasts who love to produce great sounding products that give excellent value to our customers. We get a real kick out of this. We are definitely at the affordable high end of the
business and that is where we are likely to stay.

DP: What are your favourite Arcam products?

JD: [1] A60, because it put us on the map and I hear every day from someone that is still using one! 

[2] Delta 100 cassette deck, because I always wanted to build one and the result was good enough to be a collector's item.

[3] Delta 150 NICAM tuner, because it's a great way to listen to TV. 

[4] Alpha 9 CD player (and its FMJ CD23 counterpart), because it gives true high end sound. 

[5] Alpha 7SE CD player, because it sounds great and is selling so well,

DP: Why did you invest in the CD player license back in the mid eighties?

JD: Making CD players was the obvious choice, not least because there were then no specialist suppliers out there which would suit the needs of our dealer base and their customers. We didn't repackage someone else's design because you have little or no long term control if you do that, so we bought the full manufacturing licence. Our first Delta 70 CD player sold very well, especially to owners of Linn turntables! The Black Box concept gained us a huge amount of world wide publicity.

DP: Why has the company had such an abiding interest in tuners? Are you a radio freak?

JD: Like many of our customers, I have grown up with good quality radio thanks mainly to the BBC and suggest that if you want to sell lots of amplifiers you had better be able to supply excellent matching tuners to accompany them. DAB which provides, at its best, excellent sound quality, ease of use and a wider choice of programmes. We felt it important to be at the forefront of this newest way of broadcasting radio.

DP: Why did Arcam do the Delta 100 cassette deck? Shouldn't you have done a high end CD-R instead?

JD: Hindsight is a wonderful thing! At the time we developed our cassette deck, with excellent electronics and the brand new Dolby S noise reduction system, we were able to make A-B
comparisons with CD that weren't easy to tell apart. Unfortunately soon after we launched the market became totally confused with the fight to the death between DCC and MD, and that rather sidelined what we'd achieved. So it goes . . .

This feature was published in the July 2000 issue of Hi-Fi World. No material may be reproduced from this review without the written permission of the publisher. Copyright Audio Publishing Limited.