Arcam Delta 150 NICAM Stereo Tuner

They have produced a wide range of quality hi-fi components over the years. In the 1980s they had two levels of components - an entry level range called Arcam Alpha and a the higher priced and more exotic Arcam Delta range. This web-page is about the Arcam Delta 150 NICAM Stereo Tuner. As is usual, it is contained in the high quality aluminium case of the Delta range.

NICAM is a system for compressing digital sound so that it can be transmitted alongside a PAL video signal. A full description of NICAM is available on wikipedia. The Arcam tuner was probably the best sounding product ever produced to make use of the NICAM signal. It contained a very good PAL-I tuner so could be used together with a monitor (I used a Sony PVM-2730 studio monitor) to give the highest quality reception of terrestrial broadcasts in the UK.

External views:

The controls are very simple and much like a TV. On the back there is an aerial input and output and composite video output on both a SCART socket and a BNC connector.

I sold my NICAM tuner before leaving the UK. If I had been staying, I'd have kept it to the bitter end of terrestrial transmissions so that I could have continued to get the best ever sound quality for concerts on TV, and vastly better quality of picture than DVB. However, it could be of no use in a country where there are no transmissions which it can receive.

I did not take internal photos before selling this piece of hifi, but I did take a bit of notice. The audio circuitry in particular seemed to have received a lot of attention. This used a Philips chipset of SAA7220/PB oversampling filter and TDA1543 DAC.

Arcam have the original manual for free download on their webpage.

It's a unique HiFi device which will give as good TV sound as you're going to hear, but it's useful life is limited. Other than that, I agree with the conclusion of the review from HiFi-News reproduced to the left.

I kept the excellent Arcam Delta 80 tuner.

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