Arcam DV137 - TechRadar UK

In the DV137, Arcam finally has a full-on 'universal' player that can cope with just about any disc type you can throw at it, apart from HD DVD, Blu-ray and DVD-RAM.

It also has the technical prowess to deliver stunning picture and sound quality, thanks to high-performance onboard audio and video processing and video scaling, along with a rich variety of features designed to allow the player to sit happily in multiroom systems.

From the start of the DVD era, Arcam has been one of the very few manufacturers to design and build their own DVD players from the ground up. This is a costly and difficult enterprise that in the early days produced high-performance hardware, but with fairly mundane feature sets and at relatively high prices.

Few such criticisms could be levelled at the DV137, but as usual Arcam hides its light under a bushel. Only 'Arcamoraks' will be able to tell the DV137 apart from previous Arcam DiVA disc players just by looking, though the rear panel is gratifyingly well endowed.

Well endowed

The day we found out about the DV137, the first ever SACD-compatible Arcam player, was the very same day Naim Audio announced that it would put no further effort into DVD-Audio. But the apparent shift of direction is not quite 180 degrees in either case. Naim will continue to sell their existing DVD-Audio players.

Also, when first demonstrated to the press, the Arcam DV137 was a full multichannel SACD player, but there were problems that led to audible distortion. So, the specifications have now been throttled back so that the player now plays SACDs in stereo only.

Arcam intends to reinstate multichannel SACD if a fix can be found, in which case it will be made available to existing owners as a firmware upgrade, but no promises are being made.

You may reasonably ask how - or even 'if' - this disadvantages Arcam, when so many even more costly players are also limited to playing SACD in stereo. The answer is that they are invariably dedicated stereo players, where SACD is simply a better quality alternative to CD.

Humble beginnings

The DV137 is an all-singing DVD player, which started life as a multichannel player for all major formats. It plays DVD-Video and DVD-Audio discs in multichannel; only SACD is restricted in this way. Whether you consider this a disadvantage depends on your personal pattern of use.

Stereo CD users who want a DVD tool for home cinema purposes - and to play high-resolution stereo sources - will find nothing wrong with the Arcam, but those interested in multichannel audio at the highest level may be more upset with the omission.

The audio section of the player is impressively equipped, and includes six of Wolfson's highly regarded WM8740 24-bit 192kHz DACs, one per channel, with an HDCD digital filter. The player will output up to 24-bit/96kHz PCM from stereo CD and 6x 24/192 PCM from HDMI, plus DTS and Dolby Digital datastreams.

Plug the Arcam into an HDMI v1.1-equipped amplifier (like the Denon AVC-A1XV used for this test) and the signal from CD, DVD-A and SACD remains digital for much of the way through the amplifier, though DSD data is converted to PCM at an early stage. Lip sync adjustment is available up to 150mS, and the player includes a fair range of bass management and speaker settings, though there's nothing here to compete with a well equipped amplifier or processor.

Video capabilities include the ability to upscale 480p or 576p data from DVD to any of the standard HDTV resolutions up to 1080p across the HDMI link, for use with your new HD-ready display.

The player boasts a high-performance motion adaptive progressive scan engine - the brand new Zoran Vaddis 888S chipset - with the ability to output most interlaced and progressive video outputs simultaneously to different displays (a similar simultaneous output is available from the stereo and multichannel audio outputs).

Of course, it should be stressed that this is not a native HD source (like HD DVD or Blu-ray), but the Arcam does take standard DVD-Video images and translates them to near-HDTV quality. Like many very new players, there was a minor software display glitch, which was reported back to Arcam. But this should have been ironed out by now.

Sound quality

Arcam's intention with this player was to produce a jack-of-all-trades without sacrificing quality in the process. And with the obvious exception of multichannel operation from SACD, it does indeed come surprisingly close to being a master of all it surveys.

Leaving video performance to one side for a moment, the declared intention was to ensure that the DV137 would be a first-rate audio player across all relevant audio formats (it was not tested with data reduced codecs like MP3) and in this it succeeds in style.

CD replay is fast and assured, and the player makes light work of some quite difficult recordings, a good example being Janacek's Cunning Little Vixen Suite (Reference Recordings), which can sound strained and messy in the opening passage.

The Arcam's DVD decoder helped here, as like other Reference Recordings titles this one is HDCD encoded. In CD mode, the Arcam is capable of a realistic sense of image depth, though mainly in or forward of the plane of the speaker, which gives it more of a sense of presence than some Arcam players, but less depth. Timing appears good, too.

Of course, there are better universal players than this one, but they come from companies like Ayre and Esoteric, and they are invariably very expensive. The Ayre player, the C-5xe (reviewed in HFC 282) is stereo-only from all formats and has no video capabilities, plus it costs nearly £4.5k, which helps underline just how ambitious the DV137 is at its more modest price.

Generally, the tendency of some Arcam players to sound a little lacking in grip was less apparent here, and this is one DVD player that can be used more convincingly as a CD player than most DVD-playing hardware, without sounding out of its depth.

We have acquired few new DVD-Audio discs in the recent past (other than some reissues in the Silverline label), but of the material we threw at it, the Arcam sounded completely convincing, as have previous models from the same source.

Sound quality is similar to CD, but sometimes apparently a little bolder and more architectural. Of course, the multichannel element adds its own interest - a sense of space and involvement that is harder to achieve in stereo - but this is dependent on the good taste of the recording engineer.

For every disc that has been recorded sensitively (mostly classical, it has to be said), we have at least one that just sounds a mess, with instruments pan-potted apparently at random into the larger soundstage.

The Arcam manages to evade the common criticism of SACD sound from universal players, which are strong on grace (to avoids the traps of 'digitisis') but weak on the more dynamic elements of music making.

This is a fair criticism of many of the lower cost universal chipsets used in budget universal players, which are often disappointing in long term use. However, the Arcam's audio engine is clearly made of sterner stuff, and the Arcam played its role here powerfully and with great gusto.

Video performance

Just as HD video finally launches in the UK using platforms like SKY HD , the Arcam offers an impressive half-way house through high-quality upscaling of the picture from DVD, a process that has an obvious parallel with audio upsampling. Sure, the results are not in any way comparable to true HD, which represent a paradigm shift when done properly.

Nevertheless, the Arcam's scaling was clean, with very stable and well-defined static images, and excellent suppression of motion artefacts. The player's on-board video set-up wizard helps sort the apparent brightness and contrast settings without the need for a dedicated test disc, and an unusually large internal buffer memory ensures that there is no playback gap when changing DVD layers.

This is a first-rate player that has all the features and all the performance you could wish for at the price across all disc types, with the solitary exception of multichannel SACD playback. Arcam's first universal machine was worth the wait; it's a welcome, accomplished and realistically priced newcomer. Alvin Gold