ARC ref 5SE current or past owners

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.

BIF
When hooked to the RCA input the ref5 sounded very good but as I said the volume level was at 50 and up so I won't go for the ref5 as these limitations might cause problems in the future.

BDP24 - can you elaborate a little bit ? I didn't understand exactly what do you mean by "improve test bench specs". Do you think Audionet is trying to push the owners away from high output impedance tube preamps...?

Icorem, you posted that "[w]hen hooked to the RCA input the ref5 sounded very good but as I said the volume level was at 50 and up so I won't go for the ref5 as these limitations might cause problems in the future." With respect, your post is a bit of a non sequitur. The volume control level setting is not a limitation per se that will a fortiari cause problems in the future.

That said, if you find a linestage/pre that sounds better when hooked up to your AudioNet MAX, ... definitely go for it. In audio, there is no such thing as one size fits all.