Arcam Integrated Amps

If my experience is of any value to you:

I recently bought an Arcam SA20, to pair up with my Dynaudio evoke 30 like of speakers. Initailly, it sounded good - perhaps because of being fresh off the bos etc - it had somewhat of a tubish sound, but within a couple of weeks the sound deteriorated quite a bit. Had very little dynamism. 

From a build quality and design standpoint it was BAD. I have owned a couple of Luxmans, a couple of NADs, a Marantz, a Mcintosh and Denons in the past. If the NADs are a 4 on a scale of 0 to 10 with Luxmans being at the top end, the Arcam SA20 was AT best a  low 1. The build quality is POOR, the buttons are made of plastic, they are loss & shaky, and the "click" of the button feels like something from an 80s car stereo. It is just poor design for $1500. 

I sent it back and bought a beautiful Luxman SQ -N150 in its place.

I purchase an ARCAM AVR550 only because I wanted to use it for both Home Theater and 2 channel listening.  Their AVR850 model sounds extremely good because they have a new G technology that is able to play the first 50 watts in Pure A.  Wonder what else is out there than sounds better that can be use for both purposes.  Wouldn't even mind finding something that can play only front channels when watching TV and playing 2 channel with better sound quality for 2 channel.

I meant to add customer support from ARCAM is absolutely horrible.  The customer service person after a couple of questions told me to not contact him again.  He was the rudest person I have ever talked to.  Wonder if anyone else experienced the same.

I've had an Arcam Alpha 10 integrated and 2 power amps for 20+ years (new and used) driving Castle mini towers in an apartment and then Magnepan 1.6's when we moved into a larger house. I was happy with the sound using Flatline cables and interconnects. The integrated is a little under powered for the Maggies and will overheat and shut down when pushed. I converted to an active crossover system gutting the Maggies crossover with two Alpha 10 power amps and a pre-amp. Sounded wonderful but the power amps would still overheat and shut down when pushed hard.

The power amps have both given up the ghost recently and I'm moving on to something different (more powerful). IMO, used Arcam is a pretty good deal for the sound although I'm sure there is as good or better.

Now the caveat (and it is a big one) - Service was initially good until Arcam out sourced it's NA service to another company (can't remember the name). As larry5729 points out, now "factory" service is useless. No replies, no follow-up, nada. I would have looked into Arcam's new amplifiers but for the non-existent service.

Hope this helps - Jim S.

Arcam makes highly regarded HT receivers and processors.  That’s where they excel.