Arcam A5

Introduction

It wasn’t too long ago that Arcam absolutely dominated the affordable integrated amplifier market. While the company left the true entry level to other brands, they competed from the next rung up with a variety of models that often completely cleaned up at the price points they came in at.

Fast forward to the present and Arcam has repositioned itself and the Radia A5 is the only amplifier that the company makes under £1,000 and it would be a stretch to call it ‘entry level.’ Nevertheless, the specification it offers is quite a compelling one and it means you might not need a huge amount of supporting equipment to build a system around the Arcam.

The catch is of course that the competition has been hard at work sharpening up their act as well. At the price the Arcam is being sold at, you have a huge choice of amplifiers with a wildly variable level of specification and features. Does the A5 strike the perfect balance of features, performance and value to entice? Does Arcam still have what it takes?

Availability

The Radia A5 is available in the UK for £749.95 and is sold in a variety of dealers both physical and online. In the US it is a considerable amount less, coming in at $699.95, reflecting that Arcam’s parent company Harman International is US based. In Australia, it will cost you $1,495.

Something that may or may not be useful with the Arcam is that, if you are shopping for an amp and speakers at the same time, there are a significant number of package deals where it is partnered with speakers at a reduced price. Some of these deals drop the relative price of the amp quite significantly.

Design

• Radia casework is attractive…
• … but the rear lip is maddening
• Well-made and easy to use.

The A5 looks quite a lot like the A25 which I’ve already reviewed and by ‘quite a lot’ I mean that aside from their actual model branding, they are identical. Given the A25 looks and feels entirely worth its asking price, this is very good news for the A5 at half the price.

It’s been a little over a year since I first saw the Radia series of products and in that time the sleek casework with its yellow detailing has become a little more familiar. The A5 looks and feels more substantial than almost all of its key rivals and there is not a great deal I’ve tested under a £1,000 that feels comparable.

Of course, being the same basic design as the A25, this means that it has the same lip covering the rear inputs as the A25 and I dislike it every bit as much as I did there. Leaning over the top of an amp to make connections is already a fairly tricky business. Proceeding to hide all the connections away so you can’t see them makes it much harder and it makes the initial business of getting acquainted with the A5 a little less pleasurable than it should be. It’s only fair to point out that Arcam uses this as the Bluetooth aerial which means that the A5 does without a visible one.

I can’t fault how the Arcam is built either. The way that the casework is assembled and the paint finish is absolutely top notch, helping the amp feel like it’s been carefully assembled. All the main points of contact also feel substantial and well-engineered. It’s also an easy device to live with once it is connected up. Features like the display to show input and volume are very welcome and the remote handset covers off a useful selection of functions. Only the slightly odd requirement to have to select an input after you have cycled to it takes any getting used to and it’s hardly the end of the world.

Features

• 50 watt class AB amplifier
• Three digital inputs
• Three analogue inputs and a MM phono stage
• aptX Bluetooth and a headphone socket

The single most important difference between the A5 and the more expensive A25 is the amplifier section. The more expensive amp makes use of Arcam’s sophisticated and clever Class G amplifier system that means it effectively has half an extra amplifier in the box to help keep distortion figures down. It works a charm but doubling up on key bits of amplifier is quite expensive so it cannot be done at £750. For this reason, the A5 is a more conventional class AB amp that gives 50 watts into 8 ohms. This is less than some rivals can manage but it should be enough for most requirements.

The digital board is also slimmed down. The USB input is dispensed with leaving a single optical connection and two coaxial digital inputs. This always feels the wrong way around to me – more things have an optical connection than a coaxial one – but still gives some useful enough options when CD transports and other components are considered. These connections are good to a maximum sample rate of 24/192kHz PCM which is sufficient for most needs. Some rivals offer USB at this sort of price but the Arcam isn’t unusual in not offering one.

This is partnered with three line inputs on RCA connections, one of the company’s tried and tested moving magnet phono stages. This should be quite sufficient for most setups and it is joined by a preout that will make connecting a subwoofer completely straightforward as well. It’s worth noting that Arcam has never stopped fitting phono stages to their amps and the one that they use is well regarded as well.

Connectivity is completed with a 3.5mm headphone socket on the front panel and an aptX Adaptive capable Bluetooth installation. The latter ensures that, in theory at least, all you need to get sound out of your A5 would be a phone or tablet. There are amplifiers for less money that can muster on board streaming and HDMI ARC connections but they cannot usually match the other connectivity that the Arcam offers so it’s fair to say that the A5 is competitive with most other devices you’ll find at the price.

Sound Quality

• No Class G? No problem
• Decent performance from the on board decoding
• Excellent phono stage
• Respectable Bluetooth performance

It has been a while since the A25 was here on test but listening to the A5 brings back some positive memories… and makes some new ones. I used the A5 with a pair of Q Acoustics 5020 standmounts and a pair of Mission 700 standmounts while on test. Both of these speakers can demonstrate a slightly bright edge when pushed with some amps but, on the end of the Arcam, they are both impressively refined. This consistent ability to keep things civilised is an Arcam trait that dates back decades and the A5 is absolutely imbued with it. The notional absence of Class G has no real effect on this at all.

There’s something else too… Dare I say it but the A5 can often be a little bit more fun than its big brother can. Listening to the perfect trad rock of Outta Sight by The Sheepdogs, the Arcam is out and out good fun in a way that the A25 sometimes struggled to be. It handles rhythmically engaging music with a joy that is hard not to be sucked in by and it does this while getting all of the basics right. Voices and instruments are consistently believable and, while this might not be the most detailed amplifier you can buy at the price, it manages to construct a consistently believable soundstage.

I have found the performance of the digital board to be consistently good too. I used a Bluesound Node Nano as a test source as it is a solid example of the sort of thing you might match with the Arcam in the real world. I really like how the Bluesound performs but connecting it via a coaxial digital cable and letting the A5’s digital board handle the decoding didn’t result in a performance that was adrift of what the Node Nano can do. It means that some of the very affordable streaming options that only need a digital out, would make a great deal of sense here.

If you are a turntable user, the Arcam is also going to be a very appealing proposition. I have been working in the audio industry for… quite a long time, let’s leave it at that. I don’t think that there has been any significant change to the internal Arcam phono stage in that entire time but, as it is very clearly not broken, there is absolutely no rush to fix it. Listening to Fink’s very lovely Beauty in Your Wake via the Arcam gives you a performance that is genuinely up to the task of keeping most standalone affordable phono stages honest while keeping your box count down and your wiring neater. There’s plenty of gain and that same wonderful energy that the A5 demonstrates over digital is present here too.

This solid showing is rounded off with a decent performance from the headphone socket and the Bluetooth input. The headphone amp is able to ensure that a pair of Focal Hadenys headphones delivers the level of performance that I know they are capable of.

You can reasonably argue that some of the more specialised DAC/Headphone amps can get even more out of the same headphones but, as a means of using the Arcam when the speakers would be too loud, it’s more than up the job. The Bluetooth performance is extremely similar to the A25 which means, while I feel you can do better at £1,500, I’m a lot more positive at £750. As well as sounding decent, the connection, is stable and works at a useful distance too.

Should you buy it?