"Bob Latham" wrote


Okay, I know I'll regret this but......

In October 2004 a guy at work asked me about a surround sound amplifier.
He already knew I was a Kef,Meridian,Arcam kind of guy and so was not
surprised when I suggested the Arcam amp. Not the P7/AV8 that I have but
one more in his price range. Now being less convinced that all amps are
perfect and sound the same I did suggest he listened to it before buying.

I arranged a demo with a dealer that I used for 20 years and they agreed
with me that the Arcam was very good. We turned up on the Saturday morning
and listened and it sounded fine. Then the dealer said we have a Denon in
the same price bracket, it has more bells and whistles though. We tried
that.

I think all 3 of us were surprised by the result. The Denon was quite a
bit more punchy and dynamic than the Arcam, so much so that we needed to
check both amps had the same settings and configuration and *volume* which
we set with an admittedly cheap and nasty sound pressure level meter.

Dave (work guy) and I would each have put money on taking home the Arcam
but no, the Denon lives at his house.



No suprise there - Denon make some nice amps (I've got one) and offer far
better 'bang for your buck' than certain pricey English makes from what I
can see of it. One major appeal to me is that the Denon's phono stage seems
to be pretty good (for SS) - better than the dull and weedy NAD and ProJect
cheepie standalones, IME......