Arcam

Arcam, registered as A&R Cambridge Ltd, is a British hi-fi and home cinema electronics maker founded in 1976 by John Dawson and Chris Evans, then students at the University of Cambridge. The name shortens Amplification & Recording, Cambridge, the pair's original business. Its first product, the A60 integrated amplifier, stayed in production for years and set the pattern for the company - amplifiers, players and processors sold at prices well below the exotic end of the market. The company marks its fiftieth year in 2026.

Range & what it's known for

Arcam has always been an electronics-only brand. Through the 1980s and 1990s it sold the Alpha and Delta separates, the Black Box, an early add-on DAC for CD players, and the Delta 100, the first British Dolby S cassette deck. The FMJ series carried the stereo range through the 2000s and the DiVA series added AV components, followed by the Solo all-in-one and the AVR750 4K receiver. Today the stereo lineup is the Radia series - the A5, A15 and A25 integrated amplifiers and their newer A5+, A15+ and A25+ versions, the CD5 player, the ST5 and ST25 streamers and the SA35 and SA45 streaming amplifiers. The HDA family of AVR receivers and AV processors covers multichannel. Class G output stages on the larger amplifiers, which switch in a second power rail only on peaks, are the engineering idea most closely tied to the brand.

Who owns it and where it's made

Arcam was independent for its first 36 years. In November 2012 it became a subsidiary of JAM Industries of Montreal, and in July 2017 Harman International bought it, so since then it has been part of Samsung Electronics through Harman, sitting in the same group as JBL Synthesis, Lexicon, Mark Levinson and Revel. Engineering and product design stay in England at the Cambridge Innovation Park in Waterbeach, north of Cambridge, where the management team remained after the sale.

The lineup in this catalog

Amplifiers, AV receivers, CD players and DACs (23). The cheapest Arcam electronics here cost roughly GBP 1,000, and the top AV processors and separates go beyond GBP 10,000.

Who it's for

A household that plans to run stereo and a cinema room from the same British-designed electronics is the natural Arcam customer, since the company has built both kinds of gear under one roof for decades. The A5 with the CD5 or ST5 is the starting system, the A25 or SA45 is the step up for a larger room, and the HDA receivers and processors carry the same house style into a cinema room, so a two-channel owner can add surround without changing brand.