JC51373, I am very critical of my own equipment and that of which I demo. That being said, often times it takes time to fully get to know a product and determine what works best with each piece i.e..power cords, interconnects etc... I have sold my C4's, Evo 402 and 202. At the end of the day, the C4's had a homogenous nature to their presentation..slightly blended and softened up a bit much for my taste..high frequencies were too soft and imaging was a tad left/right sounding. The 402 was brittle and flat albeit with a big bottom end...the class A sound is gone and the music suffers greatly from a lack of tonal color and liquidity. The 202 was OK but not killer dynamic and explosive with great tonal accuracy like the ref 3...the soundstage is expansive and deep with a truth of timbre and contrast not heard from any other preamp! My initial demo of the ref 3 was with a unit using a shunyata anaconda helix PC....Shunyata deadens anything I've ever heard them used on and it was no exception in this case...it made the ref 3 sound hazy! My instincts and more demo's lead me to my current rig which consists of the following:
ARC Ref 3
ARC HD220
Krell SACD Standard V5.1
Krell Resolution 2 speakers
MIT Oracle V2.1 cabling
Transparent MM Ref PC's
Wattgate Recepticles
The system has 400 hours on it and I just want to keep listening every time I fire it up...big, bold, expansive, dynamic, tonal truth, extensive, explosive yet nuanced and full of life. The best sound I have ever heard anywhere! The ref 3 and HD220 hybrid amp gives me the closest approach to re-creating the elusive sound of live music without the normal drawbacks of SS or tubes...it just presents the music sans distracting artifacts!
