[Necros]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blizzard Alphas are old. All that is gone. Allmost all new Arcam amps have electronical stepped atentuators. Some kind of software controlled volume system. The channel balance is allways perfect. You can trim the inputs so that every source will play at the same volume at the same volume setting.

Alphas are old? At the time the Alpha 9 was not revolutionary in amp design.

Point is Arcam allowed sub-par products to be sold- the channel imbalance at low volumes was a well known problem, and they did not do a product recall. The internal processor, rear processor and front processor switches were a daft design (loads of noise too). My amp had one switch on the front to switch over, totally silent in either mode. I bought my amp (different make) at the same time, and L/R balance was spot on, noise floor is zilch in normal/processor mode. And so are dozens of other amps. And not to mention the much higher noise floor and noise when using the amp in processor mod. After that experience the Arcam name is soured in my view.

The Alpha poweramps were good for the money, but still higher noise floor (hiss) than my amps..tried with the amp only on, other amps similar in output but Arcam had higher noise floor. At the time it was worth avoiding the Arcam Alphas integrated & poweramps and get something better.

 

[Bosch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Necros And not to mention the much higher noise floor and noise when using the amp in processor mod. After that experience the Arcam name is soured in my view. The Alpha poweramps were good for the money, but still higher noise floor (hiss) than my amps..tried with the amp only on, other amps similar in output but Arcam had higher noise floor. At the time it was worth avoiding the Arcam Alphas integrated & poweramps and get something better.

I do agree with this, having owned some Alpha amps. They tried to correct the imbalance problem on later Alphas, but the noise floor is still crap, as I can attest by walking over to my speakers and putting my ear to a woofer. Ssssss.... Perhaps the noise is also due to other factors, but I was never sure. The new Arcam amps are supposed to be better, but yeah, I'd only buy their CD players nowadays, or at least get a guarantee that I could refund an amp if it was unsatisfactory.