Arcam Alpha 7 Amplifier

Alpha 7 amplifier of the British company Arcam is specially designed for getting high-quality sound of amplifiers at an affordable price. The device's appearance of this series is strict and elegant. When the power is on, the only one yellow indicator lights up and upon the expiry of about 5 seconds its color changes to green and connection of output connectors to the amplifier circuit starts. If an accident occurs during operation, safety circuit activates and this is simultaneously displayed in yellow. When you turn DIRECT button on, circuits of timbre and balance control are disabled and at turning TAPE on you can control the record on tape recorder with through path. Among the sources of input signal, being switched by input selector, I will note VIDEO input for connection of sound signal from video tape recorder or laser disc player and input of corrector to connect player with MM typed head. There is no disconnection of main speaker system when you turn on additional pair or headphones, which is not always convenient. Arcam Alpha 7 has linear input for connection to another power amplifier. Impressive design feature of the amp is mono-board, which absolutely all elements are located on, including capacitors of large filters and toroidal transformer. Relatively small depth of timbre adjustment does not affect the final assessment, because while playing of most of the audio programs it turned out to be possible to install regulators in neutral position. The lack of distant control was the most noticeable. Almost all the parameters of the amp are stated with some reserve, for example, the value of nonlinear distortions' coefficient 0,01% at 1 kHz, stated at output power of 30 W, is achieved only at 40 W. The amplifier showed quite good smooth sound with accurate localization of space.