If the thought of something 'British Designed' conjures up phrases like quintessential, unique and eclectic, then Arcam's AV9 will not disappoint. Conceived and built in the heart of Cambridgeshire, the company's latest high-end processor follows hot on the outputs of the well-received AV8, and approaches the home cinema game in a radically different way to rival Japanese mega-amps.

From the matt silver finish and love-it or hate-it green dot-matrix display, the physical design is Arcam through and through. The build quality is faultless, underpinning the brand's 5-year guarantee, and the case is constructed with Acousteel - a laminated sandwich of steel-sheet and rubber that damps vibrations that can affect delicate acoustic components.

The back panel has its charms too, with no less than five HDMI inputs. Sadly there is only a single HDMI output, apparently due to the cost, complexity and politics of maintaining the HDCP signal across multiple outputs. The HDMIs all have the bandwidth for full 1080p HD signal switching, as do the analogue component video connections.

Strangely there are no iLink inputs nor the ability to upconvert video signals. Then again, you do get no less than three subwoofer outputs allowing you to 'bass tune' a room with multiple subs (and of course create seismic scale explosions...). This is clearly an AV processor with a much bigger A than V.

Along with the stringent THX Ultra 2 certification, the AV9 offers high precision calibration down to 1/2dB per channel and delay distance measurement down to just 100mm. Of course, this means that the AV purist might want to implement some sort of neck brace to watch movies so they don't move their ears out of the precise 'hot-spot'!

Conversely, the technology that Arcam eschews - when almost every other manufacturer is clutching it to their ample AV bosom - is auto setup and Room EQ. No mic, no automatic system balancing routine and no electronic equalisation - parametric or otherwise. With the AV9 you get just pure sound... a philosophy that comes straight from Arcam's hi-fi heart.

Manual setup

Blowing the dust off the tape measure and sound-pressure meter, I initially configured the AV9 with the matching Arcam P7 multichannel power amp - perhaps the most likely pairing.