Arcam - PA240 760W 2.0-Ch. Power Amplifier - Gray

I’ve tried Denon,Marantz,Onkyo,Parasound Halo. But there is something about the sound of Arcam that keeps me with them. Maybe it’s the British sound signature they have. Don’t get me wrong I love the others especially Parasound. Arcams sound is clear,separated and controlled. In a very multilayered way. Voices sound great and it’s very musical but also works amazing for home theater because of the reasons I just said above. Not all amps can do this well. Arcam does this very well. It’s just a higher fidelity sound with very low distortion. The photo shows Parasound on the left and Arcam on the right. Harmon now owns Arcam and they spend endless time in research and development so I only expect this brand to get greater as time goes on. Great product!

I've only had this amp maybe 4 weeks but BB asked for a review so here we go. First off I'll mention the size..the Arcam is big, make sure you look at the dimensions & weight numbers to be sure if the amp fits your space. With decent ventilation in an AC'ed home it will only get a little warm, not any issues with over heating or hot to the touch. This amp has a lot of power, I paired it with some big Polk R700 speakers and have plenty of power left over, even when playing at very loud volumes. It seems like it has way more power than what the specs say. Amp has a high & low gain switch for better matching with different types of preamps/receivers/Dacs. It has RCA line level outputs on the back as well, to piggyback other amplifiers but I hooked a powered SVS subwoofer to the back of this amp and honestly my Sub has never sounded better. So that turned out to be a bonus and something I had not planned on using..but it is convenient and could solve a minor issue if your 2 channel stereo doesn't have a subwoofer rca output. The RCA output does not work if you use the XLR Balanced inputs though, at least that is what the manual says. So yes this amp has balanced inputs if you were wondering, I tried it and it works fine. To me this amp sounds great. Has very good speed and tone to the bass notes, doesn't blend it all together, very accurate and nuanced. Clean and transparent but not lean or analytic. I use to have an Arcam SA30 and liked it's amplifier so that is why I tried this PA240. This PA240 sounds better while being more powerful, so if you don't need everything the SA30 has to offer this amp is the way to go. This amp has a very low 10k ohm input impedance so be mindful what you pair it with. Not an issue with most other solid state gear but if wanting to pair with a Tube preamp it's best to make sure that preamp has lower than a 1k ohm output at its lowest frequency. Overall it is just a very nice sounding and capable amplifier, I can't think of anything bad to say about it's performance. It Is a little more expensive than what I normally like to spend on a power amplifier and while I know Arcam is marked up pretty high in the US I feel the amp performs to it's price point. You get a ton of clean power from an amp that never loses it composure or overheats when pushed very hard. I have other amps that are close to this one in wattage but the Arcam is clearly the superior in all areas. Pretty sweet power amp.

Very good dynamic range, way better than my Emotiva BasX-A3. No hiss.