My personal review and experience with Arcam AVR 550 with Dirac Live

As a Chicagoan, I’ll heed your suggestion.  What kind of a warranty did the Arcam have?  Lasting less than 2 years is really poor performance; I have a 20 year old Pioneer ES in my basement system that’s going strong.  I recently replaced a 9 year old Onkyo
AVR in my living room system that worked flawlessly with a Anthem AVR that sounds great and I really think the service from Simply Stereo in Hoffman Estates is excellent (I’ve been dealing with them for years).  I hope that things work out for you.
btw, Midwest Audio in Arlington Heights is an excellent repair shop.

Funny, I was just gonna post about Arcam having tons of problems in the past but not sure if it’s gotten any better in recent years. The OP’s recent experience is not a very good sign. Too bad because they do seem to be a step above in sound versus most others.

As as a former Chicago resident, I’ll give a shoutout to Audio Consultants in Evanston. Many years ago I bought a Rotel prepro from them that developed a problem. I brought it back and, at least back then, they had an in-house repair guy who fixed the problem in a day or two. No questions, no hassles -- they just fixed it. I didn’t think about it too much back then, but with the multitude of problems seemingly plaguing almost all AVRs these days along with an utter lack of customer support these days, I think that level of service would be a really nice feature -- if it still exists. Haven’t been there in 20 years so take this FWIW.

Audio Consultants has closed all of their Chicago stores except Evanston.  I used to deal with the Hinsdale Store but when that closed changed to downtown, and now that is closed.  Neither of the latter two did any in house repairs