Company & Product Overview
Arcam has had an interesting history over the last few decades. They started out as a collaboration of some engineering students at Cambridge University in 1976 who introduced a small integrated amp called the A60, under the name of Amplification and Recording Cambridge. The name was later shortened to Arcam. Audio Advice became an Arcam dealer in the early ’90s when we were bowled over with the sound of their Alpha 9 integrated amp. From the first second we heard it, we knew it was a winner with its rich, engaging sound quality. It went on to become one of our most popular lines of high-quality good value gear and it’s hard to believe it’s coming up on 30 years since we first became a dealer for Arcam.
From their formation in 1976 till the 2000s, Arcam focused on great-sounding two-channel components. Like many companies as home theater became so popular, they tried to enter that market and like many, had issues with the new HDMI system of multiple handshakes. While their products sounded great, they had trouble sometimes locking on to the HDMI signal. This led to them being purchased in 2012 by a Canadian company called JAM Industries. JAM is a large conglomerate of musical instrument companies and they added a much-needed experience set of technical help to solve the HDMI issues. In 2017, Arcam was acquired from JAM by the Harman Group who owns many great home audio and pro audio companies.
Throughout all of this, the Arcam design team has been in the UK and has been steadfast in producing great sound first and foremost. You can tell a love for sound quality and engineering excellence runs through their veins. Harman had the foresight to see the potential in Arcam and, with their huge wealth of in-house technology, gave them the resources to come out with several very cool new products. They were determined to come out with a line in 2020 that sets entirely new price/performance standards.
The subject of today’s review is the new AV40 surround sound processor. Audio Advice has been selling this type of product since Lexicon first released the CP-1 when a 27” tube TV was considered big! We love surround sound processors and constantly debate among ourselves as to the pros and cons of each model. When we saw the feature set of the new AV40 with Dirac calibration on board, and an impressive 16-channels audio, we were thinking, this is going to be cool. But when we saw the price, we knew the AV40 was going to be not only cool but a new leader in surround sound processors.
Arcam was able to get the AV40 shipped out worldwide before the 2020 supply chain issues; however this meant shipping the hardware before the software was complete. The silver lining to this is that we were able to work with Arcam on improving the software for 3 months with the full production AV40 prior to producing this review. So if you purchase an AV40 you will want to make sure your provider upgrades the software with all of the features we describe below. It’s a bit of a time-consuming process so Audio Advice is upgrading the software ourselves and including our tips and tricks video for all customers.
