ARC ref 5SE current or past owners

love my REF 5 SE
replaced a MAC SS
can not comment on yours or the alternate as have not heard
home auditions in your system near priceless
i had at home Aesthetix, MAC, Ayre, CJ and a few others. System synergy ruled day for me anyway.
IMO ref will benefit some w tube rolling and isolation like HRS Nimbus
BTW get the metal ARC remote and check plexi cover for cracks.

Hi again
I had the Ref5SE for home audition for the past 2 days.
As anticipated I had impedance matching problems with my Audionet MAX amps. In XLR - total mess but in RCA it worked fine when the volume was at 50 and up. It sounded then much better than my current pre but I won't take it because of these synergy problems. My lesson was however that i have much to upgrade in the preamp department. As previously said I might eventually buy blindly the matched Audionet preamp but until then I will try to audition some more. Any recs ?

Icorem,

Just checked the Audionet website. The problem *IS* your amp's input impedance:

RCA: 37 kOhm, 100 pF
XLR: 3 kOhm, 100 pF

No wonder you had a different result when using the RCA and XLR inputs. The XLRs are *WAY* below what ARC recommends (20K ohms)... as I posted above. It does not surprise me that you had a better result with the RCA jacks.

I'm not sure that it is significant that your rig didn't open up until you dialed the Ref 5 SE up to 50. Right now, my Ref 5 SE is dialed up to 75. It goes to the sensitivity of the amp (or in my case, my DEQX PreMATE).

The real question is whether you liked the sound with the Ref 5 SE hooked up to your awesome looking amp (via the RCA jacks). If not ... keep looking.

Cheers,

BIF

A power amp with an impedance impedance of 3kOhms?! Keith Herron says that is done because lowering the input impedance of an amp improves it's test bench specs. Unfortunately there is a price to be paid for doing that.

10-17-15: Icorem
Hi again
I had the Ref5SE for home audition for the past 2 days.
As anticipated I had impedance matching problems with my Audionet MAX amps. In XLR - total mess but in RCA it worked fine when the volume was at 50 and up. It sounded then much better than my current pre but I won't take it because of these synergy problems. My lesson was however that i have much to upgrade in the preamp department. As previously said I might eventually buy blindly the matched Audionet preamp but until then I will try to audition some more. Any recs ?

Your result is not surprising. Checkout a VAC Signature MKIIa SE or higher. My Sig MKIIa has no problems driving my Hegel H30 with a 4M XLR. I think H30 input impedance is 20kΩ XLR | 10kΩ RCA.