Arcam

The brand

History

Arcam was born in 1972 in Cambridge, England, founded as A&R Cambridge Ltd by two engineers who had graduated from the local university, John Dawson and Chris Evans. The trade name 'Arcam' — a contraction of 'A&R Cambridge' — began to identify the products as early as the mid-1970s, and the company quickly established itself as one of the most respected voices in British high fidelity, specialising above all in amplification: the letter 'A' in the brand name is, not by chance, the initial of 'Amplification'.

Over more than five decades, Arcam built its prestige on successive generations of integrated amplifiers, CD players, receivers and AV processors from the DiVA, FMJ, rSeries and, more recently, Radia and HDA series — always balancing rigorous analogue engineering with the pioneering adoption of digital technologies, from early support for high-resolution DACs to native integration with Dirac Live, Dolby Atmos and network streaming. Since 2017 Arcam has been part of Harman International's luxury audio division, alongside names such as JBL Synthesis, Mark Levinson and Revel, which broadened the brand's global reach without changing its identity: the products are still developed and designed in Cambridge, in the same craftsman spirit as its founders.

Today the Radia line is the modern entry point to the Arcam sound — integrated amplifiers, streamers and CD players with Bluetooth aptX Adaptive, Dirac Live and full connectivity — while the HDA series brings together the brand's reference AV receivers and processors, with immersive decoding of up to 16 channels, HDMI 2.1 and Class AB or Class G amplification. In both lines, Arcam keeps its original commitment: to put the listener at the centre of the music, with engineering that combines sonic sophistication with a simple, straightforward approach to use.