Not wanting to restate Kevin’s comments, I’ll just try to add to them; I’m certainly not as succinct as he is as you can see by the length of this post. Before getting started with the listening, Kevin reminded us the purpose behind this shoot-out was simply to compare the three pieces of equipment and to do it in the spirit of fun and openness. And that’s just what happened. Kevin was a truly great host and he had nothing but good to say about ARC gear during the entire get together. He never tried to persuade us or nudge us in any direction. As you can or may have read earlier in the thread, he even mentioned how good the ARC integrated sounded after being left on for a number of hours.
To start, Kevin used his IPhone to volume-match the three integrateds. I believe everyone thought this was a very important step to put all amps on an even playing field; secondly the same speaker wire and interconnects were used for all demo purposes keeping that game-field level. Kevin then proceeded to play the same Stevie Ray Vaughn track “unblinded” (Kevin’s term for us seeing the cable swap) through each of the integrated amps. After that first round, Kevin reminded us that someone in this thread asked that it be performed double blind. So he obliged and got out his official “double blind ” (and thickness!) Cardboard boxes and put them in up as walls in front of the amps for the next round. Everyone was asked to turn their heads away during the cable swap to each amp. Once Kevin played the same SRV track through each of the three integrateds, he asked for us to vote. Pretty simple – no smoke-n-mirrors or fast switches here.
I was genuinely surprised at the tallying of the votes; more voted for the less expensive Prima Luna integrated by a margin of two to one. Before I share my pick, I can tell you straight up, at least for me, that all three sounded more alike than dissimilar; better/worse, etc. For myself, I felt that both the VSi75 and the DiaLogue Premium HP sounded pretty similar. At times I felt that one was slightly better than the other. But really, there was no clear winner for myself, still I had to pick a winner. I had no horse in this race, I just voted based on sound. I did feel that the lower-priced DiaLogue Premium was not quite as good as the other two, but there was no huge chasm either, it was really quite small. So, in the end I picked the DiaLogue Premium HP in the blind test. It was hard to pick a winner, but then after Kevin disclosed the playing order, and taking into consideration the struggle I had to pick a personal winner, I also felt that the ARC integrated was very good as well. What got my vote was the DiaLogue Premium HP seemed to have a bit more air at times and the bass was a bit more controlled at times as well. But there was not a giant or even substantial difference between the top two. I know I could live with either integrated very happily. And yes, the HP wasn’t all that much better than its little brother the DiaLogue Premium, but at the price increment between the two, you’d second guess yourself every time you settled in to listen having purchased the lower-priced integrated; the price difference is worth it in my opinion.And if all this were not enough, Kevin then took us back to his bench and took the covers off, so to speak, on both the HP and the VSi75 and explained what was going on inside. It was very interesting indeed. You could see the quality in both pieces and readily see the design philosophies of each company.
Finally, as a disclosure, I have no affiliation with Kevin or Upscale Audio, I’ve never been to his retail establishment, nor do I own any of the equipment listened to today or have any equipment made by those respective companies. I simply attended because I wanted to hear for myself the REAL difference between this gear; I was truly surprised at how little that turned out to be. –Kevin, I just want to say thank you. You’ve really shown how interested you are in good sound, so much so you took a part of your Saturday (and spent hours before in the week setting up) to share that all with us. I really appreciate that and I’m sure the other participants do to.
Tablejockey, your comments are appreciated and nice to have met you.