Arcam Receivers


Arcam is an English home electronics manufacturer with a long history of fine audio products. With the popularity of home theater, Arcam has introduced home theater receivers, surround processors, multi-channel amplifiers and DVD players. But they've never lost sight of their mission to provide the best musical reproduction possible.

Arcam's dedication to its hi-fi roots can be seen in features of some of its newer equipment: The AVR250 is a seven-channel home theater receiver capable of switching to a separate stereo amplifier that gives a slight increase in power.

Arcam Receiver AVR250
The AVR250 comes in silver or black and shows Arcam's distinctive minimalist look.

Arcam has two major product lines, Diva and FMJ. Diva is their mainstream offering, with affordable prices for the same high-quality design as their more expensive products. The compromise is in less expensive parts and the fact that they're produced in Asia rather than Cambridge, England.

The FMJ line is the more expensive luxury line designed with no compromises. Specialized components like their THX Ultra2 certified surround processor the AV8 and the P7, a seven-channel power amplifier, are designed to make the perfect match. But all this luxury and design comes at a price.You can expect to pay around $10,000 for the pair, and by audiophile standards this is considered a steal.

It's nice to know the same engineering produced a reasonably priced line of Diva home theater receivers like the award-winning AVR250 and AVR300. Both receivers provide seven channels of amplification and decoding for all the major surround formats including Dolby Digital, DTS and their extended counterparts ES/EX. It can also add surround to your two channel signals with Dolby Pro Logic II. While the Diva line doesn't provide the luxury components of the FMJ, the AVR receivers provide high-quality parts where it counts most, like the high-capacity tordial power transformer and high-end output transistors.