What Hi-Fi - June 2001 Sterling Efforts Arcam A85 The A85 blasts away any preconceptions of what an Arcam amplifier sounds like with the ferocity of a sledgehammer smashing through glass. For as long as we can recall, Arcam has made amplifiers that veered towards the warm and safe, and so traded excitement for listenability. The A85 is different. It drives through the Spooks’ haunting ‘Things I’ve Seen’ with the momentum of a 16-wheel juggernaut. Basslines are tight and stunningly defined, with not a trace of boom or bloom to be heard, and this clarity extends throughout the rest of the frequency range. The Arcam A85 produces an immaculately clean midrange packed with a resolution that most of the competition can’t even hope to match. Even better, it does this with all genres of music. It has the grunt to deliver large scale classical music such as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with authority, while having the finesse to cope with smaller scale music such as Nelly Furtado’s I’m Like A Bird’. Unlike most of its rivals here, the Arcam is a fully featured product with tone controls, two sets of switchable speaker outputs and software-driven customization tweaks. This last feature allows the user to alter the volume display, change the switch-on message or even adjust the relative gain of inputs so that the volume doesn’t change drastically when moving from, say, CD player to tuner. An additional touch is a blank space left for extra line level inputs allowing the A85 to be upgraded to a multichannel amplifier. There’s no on-board processing, though, so any DVD or SACD player will have to have the relevant decoder. This amp is a fabulous achievement: it aims to be a sonic leader while offering a full feature list and it succeeds spectacularly. There’s plenty of gifted competition at this price but even the best should be worried.
Conclusion Three amplifiers stand out from this admittedly classy crowd: the Arcam A85, Cyrus 7 and Roksan Caspian. Each is excellent, and we’d be more than happy to use any one of them at home. The Cyrus is fast and punchy without ever sacrificing refinement, and has the advantage of easy upgradability, while the latest iteration of the Caspian is a simply terrific all-rounder that never puts a foot wrong. Yet for all that, the Arcam A85 does just enough to get our vote. Its sound has the best mix of clarity, dynamics and resolution, while it’s both lavishly equipped and, thanks to that modular design, expandable too. That its also towards the bottom of the group’s price spread can mean only one thing: it takes the day, and in some style.
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