Audio Research Factory Tour

It's interesting to me what people expect in a 20 minute video. If you know the company's history and have owned and listened to many of their classic designs the video is a nice supplement to all that. I don't need to hear a soliloquy on circuit design. I appreciate seeing the people that have worked there for decades and have used that knowledge to  build great products we might own. It's gratifying to me to see the parts inventory and know that I can keep my treasured Ref 40 till I die and that ARC can restore or repair it with original parts to like new condition if anything ever goes wrong with it. Just hope I can get someone on the phone. Miss you Kalvin!

I don't see any ARC users (or anyone else, for that matter) saying, sorry I'm not buying your product because I don't know who designed it.

The original fans of Bill Johnson's designs, like the State-Of-The-Art SP-10 pre-amp and D-79 power amp, were dismayed when he handed over a lot of the ARC design work to Rich Larsen, who was largely responsible for the hybrid SP-11. That pre-amp ushered in the "dry/white/bleached" era of ARC sound. It's not that they didn't know who was doing the ARC design work, but rather that they did---Rich Larsen, not Bill Johnson. Rich's hybrid sound has obviously improved a lot since then.