If you're looking to give your home cinema system a boost this summer, you may well be pleased to read that Arcam is offering huge savings on a number of great AVRs when an old product is traded in.
The summer trade-in programme offers £1450 off the five-star AVR31 at Richer Sounds when you trade in "any home cinema product". There are big savings further down the ranks, too: £900 off an Arcam AVR21 and £500 off an AVR11. The trade-in programme ends on 31st August.
Arcam AVR trade-in deal
The AVR31 earned the full five stars from us last year. It has seven channels of power amplification and up to 16 channels of decoding, making it capable of processing audio for systems with configurations up to 9.1.6.
It boasts wide-ranging audio format support, including Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, IMAX Enhanced and Auro-3D, as well as Dolby Virtual Height, DTS Neural:X and DTS Virtual:X for systems without height speakers. It ticks all the boxes on the connections front too, with seven HDMI 2.1 inputs and three outputs, all capable of handling 8K video signals at 60fps and 4K at 120fps with support for VRR, ALLM, Dolby Vision and HDR10+. One of the outputs also supports eARC.
Other physical connections include six digital (four coaxials, two opticals) and six analogue RCA inputs, plus optical, analogue and preamp outputs. There’s an aerial connector for an FM/DAB tuner, a USB port and trigger outputs with IR extenders for two zones, along with an RS-232 serial connector and an Ethernet port. Streamers are well catered for as well, with AirPlay 2, Bluetooth aptX HD, Google Chromecast, Spotify Connect, Roon and Tidal Connect all supported.
Sonically, it offers an appreciable level of refinement, separation and articulation not often heard at this level. It certainly packs a punch during action scenes, but then there's a lightness of touch during quiet moments that is quite spellbinding. It sounds excellent streaming music too, putting in a buoyant and musical performance.
We haven't reviewed the AVR21, meanwhile, but considering it shares plenty of the same features as the AVR31 – including the same ESS 9026 Pro DAC and capacity for seven channels of power amplification – you can expect great things. Lastly, the AVR11 loses the toroidal transformer of the higher-end models, drops an HDMI output and Zone2 functionality and has decoding for 12 channels of audio rather than 16.
MORE:
Class A, Class A/B and Class D amplification: what does it mean for amplifiers?
Best stereo amplifiers: the best integrated amps you can buy
