As you can see from the already released SA15 and other new generation products, ARCAM has changed its foundry from ‘hualu’, which produces Panasonic AV equipment, to ‘’hansang‘’, which produces NAD. ‘The former is located in Dalian, China and the latter in Nanjing, China. A listing of the new factory indicates that it acquired the Swedish brand ‘Primare’ in June 22nd.
Further analysis of the listing reveals that one of the shareholders of ‘hansang’ used to be the head of development at NAD, which explains why this company has become the foundry for NAD. So, the good news is that the new generation of SA series may be better than the old one (given the slightly more consistent quality of NAD), but the bad news is that the old generation of SA may not be supported if the software is written by the OEM, unless ARCAM asks them to do so.
Also, from the product drawings that have been released for the SA45 and other products, it looks like it will support a two-channel bass output and balanced left and right channel outputs, plus the official website says that it uses ESS’s fourth-generation decoder chip, so you can presume that it will be decoded using the 9027PRO chip, and there’s no word yet on whether or not it will support DIRAC’s BASS CONTROR.
Another test report from France reads, ‘There is a slight regression. The Arcam A25’s converter chip is an ESS Sabre ES9280AQ instead of the ES9038K2M used on the SA20. When we listened to it, it seemed to give a less wired sound, drier in the treble.’
And if the SA45 had used the 9027PRO, it would have had 6 more decoding channels than the 9038k2m, but the DNR values as well as the THD+N values would not have been as good as the latter.