A&R Cambridge Ltd

A&R Cambridge Ltd (Arcam) is a British manufacturer of hi-fi equipment based in the Cambridge Innovation Park, Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, England. It was formally established in 1976 by science and engineering students from the University of Cambridge. Since July 2017, it has been a part of South Korean company Samsung Electronics through its American subsidiary Harman International Industries.

ARCAM's logo

Products

A&R Cambridge's first product was the A60 integrated amplifier, released in 1976. It soon became a classic product, admired for its restrained, sleek appearance and its high-end sound performance. These days Arcam products range from integrated stereo amplifiers through to high performance AV processors, Blu-ray players and a successful range of smaller lifestyle products.

In the 1980s, the formal company name of A&R Cambridge Ltd was shortened on the products themselves to "ARCAM", although the company's trading name remained A&R Cambridge Ltd.

An Arcam AVR750 AV receiver

Well-known Arcam brands include the Alpha (entry) and Delta (higher) separates of the 80's and 90's, the FMJ (Full Metal Jacket – referring to the casing) series and the DiVA range of stereo and AV separates (1999 to 2005). As of 2012 the range consists of FMJ (which now stands for Faithful Musical Joy) for the full size hi-fi and Home Cinema components, Solo for stereo music systems and rSeries for the lifestyle computer and streaming components such as the rBlink and the irDAC.

Arcam "firsts" include the first domestic add-on audio DAC (Black Box), first (and only) British built Dolby S cassette deck (Delta 100) and the first domestic DAB tuner (Alpha 10).

The ARCAM Solo, introduced in 2005, was the first system to place hi-fi quality separates into a one-box enclosure no larger than a separate CD player. This product also offered iPod integration via the rDock. This range was extended in 2007 to include a 5.1 AV variant and later a 2.1 version. Also, to complete the line up, a sub/sat speaker system called Muso/Logo was released, which matched the Solo products.

The company introduced its first portable hi-fi product, the rCube, in 2010 offering high quality sound, an iPod docking system, wireless music streaming and an 8-hour battery life. In 2012, Arcam expanded the rSeries to include the rPAC (a Personal Audio Converter) and the drDock (a digital dock for iPad and iPhone). Arcam also introduced a new integrated amplifier, called the A19. In 2013, Arcam launched a new generation of 4k-capable AV receivers, the AVR750, AVR450, AVR380, with a matching Blu-ray player (the BDP300) optimised for music playback. 2013 also saw the launch of Arcam's first Bluetooth product, the rBlink which utilised the latest Bluecore technology from Cambridge-based CSR plc.

Engineering and design of their products is managed in-house in Cambridge UK. ARCAM's competitors include, amongst others, Linn, NAD, Naim, Meridian, Audiolab, Rega Research, Marantz and Cambridge Audio.

Ownership

In November 2012, Arcam became a wholly owned subsidiary of JAM industries, based in Montreal, Canada.

In July 2017, Arcam became a subsidiary of the American company Harman, itself a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics.[1]

gollark: Is that a problem?
gollark: Hmm, at 10W of power utilization and 70 megaprayers per second, it's only 140 nanojoules per prayer.
gollark: But I doubt people use the entire processing capacity of their brain for prayers, given that a lot does vision processing and muscle control and whatever.
gollark: How much energy do people usually pray with? IIRC human brains run on something like 20W.
gollark: Yes.

References
  1. Cox, Joe (16 July 2017). "Arcam acquired by Harman, a division of Samsung". What Hi-Fi?. Retrieved 21 July 2017.
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