Arcam A15+ Review

Price

In the UK, the A15+ is available for £1,199 and can be had from a wide selection of retailers including online ones. In the US, thanks to the involvement of American parent company Harman International, it is available for $1,199. In Australia, it is yours for $2,299 AUD.

It is also possible to buy run out models of the older (non +) A15 as well. These have been substantially discounted and should be easy to spot as not the latest version but do make sure you’ve got the right version if you see a deal that looks a bit too good to be true.

Design

• Largely unchanged from the original
• Display and remote makes for a simple interface
• Yellow details a matter of taste
• Lip at the back still extremely annoying

As the Radia models haven’t really been on sale that long, Arcam has elected to leave the A15+ pretty much the same as it was at launch.

This is no bad thing; very little of the commentary that accompanied the launch of the Radia models was anything other than very complementary. It’s a full width design where two large controls flank a LED based display. The standard of build and finish is very good although something like Quad’s similarly priced Amp 3 arguably looks a feels bit more special to use.

This display is used in combination with a small but well-designed remote to create an interface that is very easy to use. So long as you remember that you need to select the input you have scrolled to, it’s intuitive and a pleasure to use. There are menus for extra functionality which all work pretty well and this is an easy amp to use day to day.

The sample was here at the same time as the more expensive SA35 which includes a full colour display to help the on board streamer and this feels nicer too but it’s a stretch to say that the A15+ is anything other than a pleasure to use.

Also retained from the original is the yellow highlights and detailing. Yellow is not a terribly commonly encountered colour in audio equipment and its presence on the Radia amps is something that inspires a bit of a debate. I am obligated to point out that there isn’t that much yellow on the A15+ and I quite like the effect (much as I like retro, I do feel that not everything needs to look that way) but plenty of people have expressed rather stronger dislike for it.

Something that I have expressed more of a dislike of in the past and that the A15+ retains as part of its design. I am afraid there is a little part of my soul that dies when I encounter one of these in the wild.

I know the arguments for them; why they look so alluring on renders and in glossy marketing shots. They promise to hide the connections away and make things look neat. However, you don’t attach cables to a render but you do to an actual product and the lip on the A15+ makes this as miserable an undertaking as it is on anything else with the feature.

It’s not helped by the Arcam having a wide spread of functionality and it being arranged in a slightly non-linear way. Once it’s done it’s done and it’s of no concern but you will swear at it during set up.

Specification

• 80 watts of power
• Three RCA inputs plus MM phono
• Two coaxial and one optical input… but no USB
• Updated Bluetooth
• HDMI eARC

The tweaks to the A15+ are not night and day; if you own the original, there is no need to even think about changing, but they are useful. This is the largest Arcam amp to not use the company’s Class G technology, making do with good old Class AB.

Thanks to a beefed up power supply, output is raised to 80 watts into ohms which should be sufficient for most speakers it is likely encounter. No figure is quoted but the review sample hasn’t melted into a four ohm load so it can handle one.

This is made available to three RCA inputs and a matching stereo preout. This isn’t a huge number but it reflects the declining number of sources that people are likely to have. There is also an example of Arcam’s excellent moving magnet phono stage as well. Arcam notes that this phono stage has been ‘fine-tuned’ but declines to say what the tuning entails.

This is joined by a digital board that is built around an ESS ES9018 DAC. This can handle very high sample rates indeed… but not on the A15+. Like the original model, Arcam has decided to limit USB to the A25+ and streaming to the SA35 and SA45 models.

Given that plenty of rivals at the price have USB, it leaves the A15+ feeling a bit underspecc’d and means that attaching a laptop or similar device is harder than it would otherwise be.

If you are using Bluetooth though there are some useful steps forward. The base version is update to v5.4 and it supports AVRCP, BLE, SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD and aptX Lossless and LE Audio which is impressively comprehensive.

Auracast has now been added which means that the Arcam can be used to broadcast it multiple devices that are suitably equipped. The A15+ can also transmit to wireless headphones which is a useful extra feature as more and more of the headphones we use day to day become wireless designs.

Then there is the newly added HDMI ARC input. It’s actually an eARC fitment with improved functionality and it’s a very useful thing indeed. Arcam has a huge amount of experience with HDMI and the eARC connection here ‘just works’ in a way that some rivals can struggle with.

On test here, with two different TVs it has performed with unconditional stability under test; still something that is sufficiently far from a given with HDMI that it’s worth noting.

Performance

• Classically Arcam ‘balanced’ sound
• Digital board is a decent but not truly spectacular performer
• Phono stage is excellent
• Strong performance via HDMI
• Bluetooth is more than respectable too

The A15+ is an updated version of an amp that itself hasn’t been on sale for that long and yet, listening to it, I am often left feeling very sentimental indeed. There is a very definite Arcam ‘house sound’ and it’s one that they have been gently evolving for a very long time.

I owned an Arcam amp as a teenager that had qualities I recognise in the A15+. This is an amp that manages to work in a level of refinement into everything that it does that means that even very challenging material stays civilised. Listening to East India Youth’s Culture of Volume; an album that combines moments of joyous musicality with, well, noise really, the Arcam does a great job of keeping it all listenable.

This is not a shock and awe style device. You can buy more dynamic and forceful sounding amplifiers for the same sort of money. Where the Arcam shines is when you sit down for an extended listening session; the sort of thing where you have absolutely no idea where you will end up.

What the A15+ does with absolute assurance is make sure that, no matter what random end of your collection you visit, it will stay listenable and, more importantly, enjoyable throughout. Yes, you can get deeper bass and more sparkle from some rivals but this even handedness is hard not to admire and it’s going to gel well with all but the dullest sounding speakers.

To test the digital board I used a Bluesound Node Nano into the optical connection. This resulted in a perfectly listenable performance… but truthfully one that confers little real advantage over connecting the Nano over an RCA cable.

More than any serious performance advantage, the absence of USB means you can’t press an old phone or tablet into service as a cheap high-res streamer. Almost everything with an optical or coaxial output is likely to have a similar flavour of ESS DAC lurking in it (the Nano does for example) so it’s not going to result in very different performance when connected to the Arcam’s digital inputs.

Making use of the phono stage on the other hand is very much worthwhile. If you held a gun to my head and asked me what had changed between the A15+ and the phono stage I’d tested in the original A5 and A25 and the A15+ I’m not sure I’d answer correctly but there was so little wrong with the other amps that this is mostly a reflection of how solid the performance is.

Listening to the Night Light by White Lies sees the Arcam deliver its trademark refinement and unflappable presentation, combined with low noise levels and a useful amount of gain makes for a very fine partner for an equivalently priced turntable.

The newly added eARC also puts in a decent performance. As well as being wholly reliable, the Arcam’s refinement and hefty levels of power are enough to ensure that even fairly dynamic bits of TV can be delivered in a way that combines a bit of punch and impact with that same consistent refinement to keep things sweet.

As with all connections of this nature on stereo amps, there is no significant performance difference over using optical but the boost to integration is considerable.

The final element of what is already a fairly enticing package is the Bluetooth. Once again, in the absence of being able to test Auracast, the performance jump over the older model is hard to define but, listening via an iPhone 16 Pro Max and a Creative Labs Bluetooth dongle is a genuinely engaging performance.

Likewise, sending a signal back from the A15+ to a pair of Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 headphones, while a bit of a faff to pair initially, resulted in excellent overall performance. This is still quite a rare feature and one that gives the Arcam an edge over many rivals.

Should you buy it?