However, the Arcam routes the unamplified height signal to a preamp-out pair, which I sent to two channels of my everyday power amp, sitting otherwise idle. There’s a preamp output for 7.1.4 channels should you force Atmos maximus into play with the addition of outboard amps (but no multichannel analog inputs, which are increasingly unnecessary) and seven speaker outputs on substantial metal dual-banana pairs.Īs implied above, the power-amp section is but a seven-channel affair, with numbers 6 and 7 assignable to front- or rear-height (or second-zone stereo), leaving, in a 5.1.4 setup such as mine, one Atmos height speaker pair powerless. (Does anybody ever actually use those?) The result is one of the best-looking AVRs out there I liked it extremely.Īround back, Arcam has followed Thoreau’s maxim to “simplify, simplify, simplify”: There are no analog video connections whatsoever, just a row of seven HDMI inputs (and three outs, including a second-zone option) and the corresponding stereo analog inputs. The slightly bulging front panel has a semi-matte black-with-gray-in-it finish, and other than a pair of tiny 1/8-inch ports for headphone-out and aux-in, Arcam decided to forgo the usual frontpanel connection jacks. Progress! The design is quintessentially understated. The new Arcam looks very much like its predecessor, the AVR750, save for one important distinction: It has a knob on its front panel, whereas the AVR750 was an all-pushbutton affair. Dirac also claims that its mixed-phase filter algorithms are more effective in correcting time-domain errors (I’m paraphrasing here) than the finiteimpulse-response filters employed in most or possibly all other such systems.
Dirac live not picing up arcam 550 Pc#
Developed in Sweden, the Dirac solution requires outboard processing in the form of a PC or Mac during setup, but it provides a far more user-interactive experience than do consumer-level onboard systems such as Audyssey or the proprietary solutions found increasingly in mainstream AVRs. In Arcam’s implementation, the rail voltages are allowed to vary continuously (Class G), as opposed to hard-switching between two or more voltage levels (Class H, etc.).Īnd the third big story: Arcam’s design incorporates Dirac Live speaker setup and room-correction, a feature we’ve encountered before (in Emotiva’s XMC-1 pre/pro). Since music’s peak-to-average power demands are on the order of 10 to 1 or more, this should have zero performance penalty, with the benefits of being smaller, cooler, and lighter.
Instead of the high-voltage power rails (plus/minus DC voltages provided as the current reservoir to the power-output devices) found in all Class A and A/B designs that are used in the vast majority of amps and receivers, Class G maintins much lower-voltage rails, but with highervoltage sources available for shortterm demands. Geek-hats on, please: Class G is a version of an amplifying topology that has been around for decades. Next, and in common with very few other receivers ever, as far as I know: an unusual amplifier topology, Class G. First, and in common with just about every other current top-line AVR: Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. But rather than take it on faith, we solicited a sample of Arcam’s latest design. Whether you regard audio’s higher end as a tight-knit community or a mere rag-tag of warring tribes, it is most certainly a village, especially in today’s net-connected age, and the collective judgment of a village is rarely wrong. At least, that’s what the British firm claims-and the aggregate opinion of the audiophile world seems to concur. So what do you get for your extra couple of kilo-clams? That’s a lot of simoleons for a box that, on the surface anyway, doesn’t do quite as much stuff as the big-brand models, doesn’t have as much claimed-on-paper power or as many colored lights or flashing displays, and which exudes a substantially simpler design aesthetic. Arcam’s new flagship A/V receiver, the AVR850, is about the most expensive receiver you can buy today: $6,000 here in the Land of the Free(-ish) (not counting a slightly more expensive, similarly spec’d model sourced by Arcam for AudioControl).
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