Good, but... (Arcam Alpha 10)

Name: kieranmoore

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Product:	Arcam Alpha 10
Date:	30.07.02 (1448 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sound, Fun display

Disadvantages: Construction, Price

As I had an A10 amp, A8se CD, and A8 analogue tuner, i thought I'd add one of these to the setup, particularly when I heard the range was going to be discontinued. At the same time I bought an A10 power amp, for bi-amping my new Pro-Ac Studio 120's.

The case is identical to the A10 amp, with all the buttons and knobes being in the same positions, albeit serving a different purpose. Being an Alpha it shares the same less than solid feeling constructions as the other units, but no problems so far.

Found that the included ribbon aerial didn't do anything, so connected it up to my existing FM antenna, having purchased a convertor for this. Set it to auto-tune, waited while it scanned, and sat back with bated breath.

Thankfully, the sound was excellent! The benefits of DAB won me over instantly. No hiss ever again!

The tuner includes a number of display modes for the more technical (not me!). As well as signal quality, you can see the bit-rate and the compression factor. Allied with the RDS type scrolling text, I was playing quite nicely with it.

As a unit, it goes well with the other Arcam gear, and has a bypass for an analogue FM tuner, so that they run off a single input socket on the amp.

Being in the first wave of the DAB efforts, this is not a cheap unit, but it certainly an excellent effort, and is about as 'fun' as radio can get for me.

Summary: