News

Arcam has lowered the entry price of its HDA range of Dolby Atmos/DTS:X AV receivers with a new seven-channel model. The AVR5 will be available before the end of the year, for £1,999.

Previously, the UK brand's AVR lineup began with the £2,700 AVR10, and reached £5,000 for the flagship AVR30. Arcam's senior director Nick Clarke believes the new model will help it meet the 'strong requirement below the existing offering.'

'The AVR5 perfectly meets this need by offering a comprehensive and configurable feature set along with the legendary sound quality Arcam is well known for.'

The receiver uses a Class A/B amplification stage to power 5.1.2 or 7.1 speaker arrays, but also supports 11-channel processing into its RCA preamplifier outputs. Atmos and DTS:X decoding is onboard, plus upmixing variants.

In terms of connections, the AVR5 embraces both physical and wireless hookups, the latter including Wi-Fi/Ethernet, aptX HD Blueooth, Apple AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect and Google Chromecast. Arcam's MusicLife UPnP app enables hi-res audio streaming.

The HDMI implementation provides seven inputs and two outputs (one with eARC) but is limited to v2.0b – meaning no out of the box support for 4K/120 or 8K/60 video passthrough. As with other models in the HDA range, however, it will be able to be upgraded to HDMI 2.1 via a physical board swap, at an Arcam service centre. Pricing for this is TBC.

Other features of the AVR5 include Room Ready certification and MQA support, RS232 and IR control, and dual ESS HyperStream II DACs (as found on the Class G AVR30) in the preamp stage.

Interestingly, the new receiver claims the same output power as the step-up AVR10 – 60W per channel into 8ohms with all seven channels driven. The main difference in specification, therefore, is that the AVR5 doesn't come pre-loaded with Dirac Live room EQ functionality.

This is now an optional extra, with owners needing to purchase a Dirac licence. Arcam says it will offer a 50% discount for 'a limited time'.

Additionally, presumably to hit the £2,000 price point, the AVR5 doesn't feature support for IMAX Enhanced – a feature shared by the AVR10, AVR20 and AVR30 models.

See Arcam's website for more information.