Have your say & ask the experts

John Arcam Dawson:

the record spot:

I read with interest in "a rival publication" Arcam produced a cassette deck some years back - turned out around 400 units and left it at that. Any reason why the company didn't pursue the medium, or were the pressures of turning out the highly successful Arcam Alpha 5/6 amp and CD players (I'm guessing it was around this time?) too demanding on the production side?(BTW - I still have my Alpha 5 - a strong amp to this day IMO)EDIT - Thanks for taking the time to answer our queries too John - very much appreciated.

The full story behind the Delta 100 cassette deck is a long one - perhaps for another time - the short version is that this first design didn't really make money despite its £850 price tag. It was one of the first units in the market with Dolby S - a very powerful analogue noise reduction system - and with good tape and not too demanding music it was difficult to tell a CD and the taped copy apart. Unfortunately this time also saw the launch of the ill fated DCC (digital compact cassette) by Phillips and Matsushita and its rival MD (Mini Disc) by Sony, and our unit was caught in the crossfire as it were. In particular Sony used its manufacture of the Dolby S chipsets (they were the sole supplier at the time) to drive down cassette deck costs to try to kill DCC - they succeeded by the way - and we could never get economy of scale we needed with a follow up Alpha class machine because the complete decks were sold on the market at well below the cost of us buying mass volume of kits of parts. So it goes. I still have one by the way

And thanks for the praise on the Alpha 5/6 series - a range which really put us on the map and which were made (in the UK) in very large numbers - this was before Chinese based manufacture led to a catastrophic fall in prices (from our point of view!) as with DVD players and so on.

John Dawson 

Oh memories, my degree dissertation was on DCC vs MD, and I found that neither would win either, even then (although I wanted both to win in my heart).

Anyway enough of the hero stuff. John, I'm going round to another member's house on Thursday to completely pillory his Primare/PMC system and that will be reciprocated at some point in the not too distant future - any tips on where I could tell him his system is 'ok but not up there with the best'.

I'm only joking, actually just looking forward to a glass of Fleurie and some spag bol to be honest. I think most of these decent systems are going to sound terrific and I'm really interested to hear the difference in take of his system to mine.

However, I'd be really interested to hear from the horse's mouth about how you set about creating Arcam gear, ie what's your mission statement? What do you personally look for when listening to music? What sort of music/mood do you feel Arcam really do shine with?

I have my own views on this and to cut a long story short I find guitar and voice are the real strengths; in fact in my living room which is mainly for nighttime listening my Dali's are very mellow with my Arcams, daytimes in the kitchen/back garden my ProAc Tablettes are much more forward, it's very interesting to hear two similar priced speakers give a different view on the music, albeit the Dalis are much more sensitive and noticeably louder at the same volume.

Out of interest what in your opinion, are the differences between CD92 an CD192? 

I appreciate if you don't want to divulge too much.