Arcam Solo CD receiver

To regular folk this looks like an attractive and sensible bit of hi-fi that is a bit more expensive than the norm, but to those of us in the hi-fi fraternity it's nothing short of a revelation. Arcam, a brand which has been synonymous with separates hi-fi for nigh on 30 years, making an all-in-one system - outrageous! Clearly the times they have a-changed and the modern music lover demands something more elegant than a stack of black boxes in her/his minimalist living room. With the Solo, Arcam has risen to that challenge, in fact this thing is so damn sexy I'd say the company has towered over said challenge and crushed it convincingly, and that's even before you turn it on.

So what is the Solo then? It's a CD player, an amplifier and both a DAB and an FM tuner (or an AM/FM tuner, for the US) that sits in an extremely stylish case with full remote control and stunning ease of use. Now any number of far eastern brands have made functionally similar products but what differentiates the Solo is Arcam's credentials in the hi-fi field. It was the first major company to bring a DAB digital tuner to the market and its CD players and amplifiers have been among the most successful in the budget and mid-price markets since way back when. So even though the Solo is pretty, easy to use and silver coloured it has audio credentials that Sony and Denon would kill for.

Inside the case is a CD player based on the Arcam CD73 with 24-bit Wolfson DACs and a Colpitts clock that will play both CD-Rs and the less commonly accepted CD-RWs. The amplifier is a 50-watt design with twin toroidal transformers and nine independent regulators while the preamp offers the convenience of front panel mini-jacks for headphones and MP3 players or games.

Other features include a clock with four alarms that lets you wake up to CD or radio and a combined DAB and FM radio, albeit with only one aerial input so you'll need a suitable signal combining box if you want to use separate aerials. Because of the shared nature of this connection the Solo digitizes FM signals and samples them at 32kHz, which is unconventional but allows equalisation in the digital domain which gets around the normal phase issues.

You can actually listen to both DAB and FM broadcasts using the supplied T-shaped wire aerial. While results with both are obviously dependent on the broadcast, none of the local DAB stations sounded much better than cramped but did at least have more bass welly than their counterparts on FM. As usual, the best sounding station was Radio 3, and if you stay up late enough the station plays some great music too! Even with this basic aerial, shows like Mixing It and Late Junction sound good enough to pump up the volume.

Performance
Results are significantly more impressive with the onboard CD player which combines with the amplifier to produce a well-rounded and revealing sound. Dzihan & Kamien's *Fakes is as fruity and well-timed as you could want with plenty of bass welly when it's needed. This being a relatively low-powered amplifier, the bass grunt factor depends on the speakers used, but stick to something with better than average sensitivity and a relatively easy impedance and you'll get good results. Arcam has matching Alto speakers on the way which are presumably well suited to the job.

With some nice efficient Coincident Super Eclipse III speakers I had a great time playing all manner of stuff from Missy Elliott to Frank Zappa. The overall quality is way above that found in the better marketed brands in this sector (ie Bang & Olufsen and Bose), and it has a degree of integrity which is clearly related to the Arcam's separates heritage. If one were to get fussy - separates reviewer style fussy - the midrange could be described as being a little dry and it would be nice if the bass were a bit meatier. Having said that, there's plenty of energy and drive with a sympathetic speaker and compared to a standalone budget amplifier the onboard power is impressively clean and relaxed.

The Solo combines more than just CD, radio and amplifier functions in one box; it also combines great sound for a CD receiver with good looks and ease of use that is second to none. There is a hefty blue manual supplied with the Solo but the machine is so intuitive to use that it was never necessary to refer to it. Presetting radio stations for instance works like a car radio, just press the preferred numeral on the remote for a few seconds and the display tells you it has stored the station. You can access both DAB and FM stations directly from their presets without changing band and the on/off button looks like PacMan! What more could you ask for?

Verdict:

A great result all round, the Solo combines DAB and RDS FM radio in such a way as to make it easy to flit from one band to the other, it has a very good CD player and impressively transparent amplifier. There are few one box systems that combine these features and even less that do so with such a high degree of sonic conviction.