Arcam Alpha 7SE

before i start i must make it very clear. i am an arcam fan. that is arcam of the 90's. I have had the diva 85/85p amps and i believe the 92 cd player. i couldnt argue about its superb quality. its clear sound. but i also kept my 290/290p and 250/50 cd player. i had them both attached to celestion a3s and a1s respectively. you would think i would be with the new system. no, i kept going back to the older, warmer, cosy feel of the older 290 based system. so i sold the 85 system. no shortage of takers i hasten to add. so here we are today. i still have my 290 amps. just been serviced superbly by arcam. and i have recently bought this stunning 7se cd player. i have owned an 8se, even a 9 as well as my reference 250/50 cd player. how does this fellow compare. the answer is superbly. i genuinely cant believe how good this player is. clear, concise, warm. in short an arcam in its heyday.i know that they have gone on to great things in todays market. personally when they changed the sound they lost something. so i will keep my amps and this gorgeous 7se and just play it and enjoy the fact that I managed to get it from a decent bloke on ebay for £63.There is a god out there and more he loves his music played on an arcam system from the 90's. im a big fan. hope this helps. if you see one just buy it. partner it well and it will serve you well.

The Arcam Alpha 7SE is such a good CD player for those wishing to move out of the budget market to a place where sound quality and detail matter. I purchased one of these on Ebay a while back for around £120 and it has been superb. CD's load quickly and the machine delivers the music with a bright and accurate touch that I did not receive from the succession of cheaper players I owned before. I listen to a lot of modern Jazz and other contemporary sounds with a Jazz influence (some of it pretty wild) and this player has performed well across the whole spectrum. I used to believe that quality of sound was all down to the quality of the speakers but this player has opened my ears to the importance of all components in the system. After this, I quickly purchased other Arcam Alpha components (8R & 8P) at great prices and now have a system in another league completely. Bass is more defined (not just a low frequency 'throb' and 'boom') and when the music becomes busy and complex at the top end, I now seem to hear all of the component parts clearly and without the rough or distorted edge which used to occur (especially at volume). The Alpha 7SE really is a great player at the current second-hand prices. Don't be put off by another reviewer's experience of a faulty player as I did my research and it is not a common problem - you would be very unlucky to experience such difficulties. On its release in the late 90's this player received much praise and awards by the ton and much of this Alpha range seems to have been at the technical gateway into very high class and expensive audiophile components from Arcam. The beauty of buying Alpha is that you get all of this technical genius without the price tag applied when they introduced fancier boxes and finishes often with little improvement to the sound. The slim matt black finish with that little curve still looks good, better than a lot of contemporary products, a decade on. I think you get the picture: this is a good piece of hifi kit and you are probably about to get it for a song... one you will enjoy with precision and warmth!

I would like to say I am delighted with this product. When it works properly the sound is excellent, as per what I had read before buying it. However it soon developed a fault within a month of arriving. It started by not reading cd info at all. Careful use of a cleaning disc, and removing the cover to suck out any dust saw an improvement, but it seems to mis-track on either track 5 or track 6, often jumping to the final track of the cd, or going back to the start of the track it jumped on. I found by accident that turning the player on its front seems to correct the fault temporarily. Someone has suggested that a chip may not be seating properly, but I haven't investigated that as yet. I hope I can sort the problem soon becasue it is spoiling my enjoyment of it.