Music Hall vs. Schiit

I know I'll get hate mail for this but sell your prized preamp.  ARC stuff, and I owned an ARC pre is very analytical and approached sold state sound,  I am not going to suggest something in particular but you want a pre that uses octals.  There is more than one guy around who makes these. Get some Cardas gold refs or gold something close, but not their current line. I think you will be surprised.  If you get warm sound out of your speakers it may be too much.  I went through this myself, without the DAC element.  A lot of solid state will flatten the sound but which element it is may be hard to pinpoint. 

I recently got my Schiit Modi3 DAC and it is outstanding. My early experiences is a very dynamic, detailed, warm bass, clear and airy highs sound. It is fed into a Mystere IA1 EL34 tube integrated amp using Audioquest interconnects. I haven’t heard the other products to compare to but I’m impressed with the Modi3 in my system.
My source is a Yamaha BDP via coaxial and HDTV via optical. I haven't tried USB from my phone yet because I don't have a cable yet.

I cannot argue that the ARC SP16 preamp may not be one of the better tube unit for producing a warm, non-analytical sound since auditioning experience is limited. However, by comparing it to solid state units like the Rotel 10 years ago, the SP16 was clearly more authentic. At this point, I'm limiting my chase for better fidelity to a transport & DAC to replace my dead Cambridge Audio Azur 840C.

Thank you, mjcmt, for your thoughts.

who designs music halls DAC's?

 Mike Moffit at Schitt Audio is one of the founders of ADC-DAC's? Schitts stuff is upgradable too to the multibit version. that's the way i'd go if it was my money.