Arcam Solo Mini

High-end hi-fi audio almost always comes at a high price, putting off would-be audiophiles around the world. I'm Nate Lanxon and today I'm going to show you how you can get a true audiophile-grade hi-fi, for well under a grand, with the Arcam Solo Mini. This is a £650 CD player, hi-fi amplifier, and a digital and FM tuner, all wrapped up in a box about half the size of just one hi-fi separate. Arcam is a British hi-fi manufacturer that usually crafts high-end audio and visual separates, but they took out some of the key components of their flagship products, and stuck them in this pretty attractive little box. So, what's inside? Well you've got 25 Watts of sustained output per channel, which is pumped from 8 ohm terminals here. And there are four gold-plated terminals round the back for hooking up other audio equipment. There is also a pre-out, should you want to add a more powerful amp in future, as well as It'll play regular CDs, but I guess you figured that out already, but it also plays MP3s or WMA files from CDs, too. Support for SACD would've been a nice touch, too, but SACD isn't really a mainstream product, and the Solo Mini very much is, so it's not a huge deal. It'll also playback MP3s and WMA files from USB sticks, but only if they're not crippled with DRM from the likes of Napster. Now something Arcam could've done quite easily have done is add support for some extra audio formats, particularly FLAC, WAV or AAC. These offer much higher quality audio than the two supported formats, adding bonus appeal to anyone who likes to rip CDs for use on their computers and the such. And with the emphasis here on sound quality, it seems unusual that such formats weren't supported since Arcam went to the trouble of adding a USB socket. Emphasis here is on sound quality from CDs, and that's something the system's extremely good at. Its superb CD player and suitably good amplifier delivers a really clear, detailed and rich sound. It'll run out of steam if you hook it up to large floor-standing speakers, but if you own a pair of those, this probably isn't the system you should be looking at anyway. You can buy the Solo Mini on its own, or as a package with these Muso speakers. On their own they're worth about £250 a pair, and they're not bad. We weren't blown away, but if you don't already own a good set of speakers, they're a decent first pair. We had the system hooked up to some of our much more powerful reference speakers, and they did blow us away -- there's a great deal of power and detail on offer here, with surprisingly low distortion. Really, we barely heard any. You can also snag an Arcam rDock -- that's this little thing -- for about £100. It'll let you hook up your iPod, and lets you browse its contents using the Solo Mini's remote. It also transfers artist and song names to the dot matrix display. It's the best iPod dock we've ever used, and a superb investment if you plan on using the iPod with this system. We could go on at greater length about how much we like this. You could reproduce its performance with some good, well-priced separates, but with the Solo Mini you've got the advantage of it being just one unit -- ideal for small flats, or rich peoples' bedrooms. Don't miss my full review for way more detail and of course the all important score. I'm Nate Lanxon for CNET UK, with the Arcam Solo Mini.