ARC Ref 5se inferior to LS28?

I honestly think a large percentage of the well to do audiophiles with brand loyalty do not "upgrade" their gear in search of better sound. Aside from pure curiosity, they upgrade because they want the latest models on their racks. The only semilogical explanation I got from a friend of mine who falls into this group, also an avid ARC fan, was he keeps his gear only while they are under warranty so he doesn't have to pay for any repairs. He literally trades them in for the new model. I have another friend who uses the same logic with cars. He turns them over at the end of the lease and gets the same exact model brand new. Amplifiers have hardly changed and there're no functional differences among the models over the past forty years. With a very few minor exceptions, almost all the line stage preamp also do the same thing. Some people just love that new tube smell...

Exactly kulali. We are talking tube electronics for gods sake!  For me I would be less inclined to buy a brand that continually offers new models as it shows they are more focused on the bottom line than on giving their customers good value. 

+1 kalali. If they only knew how much money they were really spending just to have that warranty...

However, I differ from analogluvr in that I would be more inclined to buy a brand that continually offers new models, because I buy used gear.
Hence, my used unit would probably be "newer" than the other brand.

I'll gladly take hand me downs from those that love that new tube smell...

Bdp24, it looks like what you are saying is ARC is finally getting as good as they were when they started.

Ha! It seems like progress is a circular phenomenon, coming back around to where you started, only slightly higher up the flagpole (as Donovan Leitch put it, "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is".). The claims for improvements are wildly exaggerated imo, with promises of many veils removed in each new model. I’ve seen a statement from ARC that a lot of their customers replace their current model with every other new model, skipping one---Ref 1 to Ref 3, for instance. So ARC is very aware of the phenomenon, perhaps tailoring their product development and marketing to what they believe their customer base will accept and support.

Analogluvr put it perfectly with his "giving their customers good value" statement. That is exactly the point I was trying to make. My comparison of the cost of ownership between an ARC and an Atma-Sphere pre-amp---just one example---makes the contrast pretty clear. There are a lot of small high-end companies doing as Atma-Sphere does---offering updates to owners of long-running models, to keep them competitive with new models from ARC and others. Keith Herron does it, as does VPI, Eminent Technology, Rega, Tri-Planar, Pass Labs, CAT, and plenty of others. Whether or not any given ARC piece is better than it’s price-point competition is an individual assessment, but the ARC buyer should be aware that the model he is buying will be discontinued before too long, and all subsequent R & D will be put into it’s replacement model, the owners current model becoming a dead-end component, no improvement to it offered. To get an improvement, he must sell his current ARC piece and buy the new one---that’s the ARC business model. The other companies invest their time and energy into improving the already-existing model, offering updates for a nominal charge, maintaining the investment the owner has made in his component from that company.

In the end, the ARC customer has spent far more for the quality of sound he now enjoys than has the owner of the equivalent component providing comparable sound quality from another company. Is the ARC piece so good that it’s worth that price? We all get to decide that, but ARC certainly has it’s loyalists!