Audio Research D240 mkll vs Adcom GFA-555

The modded 555 is probably a keeper, but how much do they want for the D240?  If the price is right, you might give it try.

All the best.

JD

Curiousjim they wanted $750

That ARC is a great ampI would grab it asap as I can tell nobody above here has ever heard the potential of this unit. It is well more sophisticated and dimensional in my experience which I can promise I have actually heard the unit.
 It also has a friendly input impedance for a tube preamp. Match it up with any decent Tube unit like ARC, Quicksilver, Audible Illusions etc and you will have a great system to play with your speakers or any great speakers full-range like Vandersteens or Magnepans. Best JohnnyR

I happen to think the ARC is just fine myself, having owned and happily used 2 different SS ARC amps in the past.

I was not specifically promoting the Adcom amps, re mods or whatnot, I was just covering the fact that not all amps are as they could be, or can be, due to the constraints of reality.

If I was to start with an unknown base amplifier, and then modify from there (all being equal), I would start with the ARC amp, not the Adcom.

But I would happily tinker with either brand of amplifier.

It is possible to make one sound better than the other and then keep working on each... and make each leapfrog the other in sound quality. Back and forth, back and forth...

As this is the main thing about most all amplifiers. Having seen the insides of almost any amp known to exist in the high end (nudie amplifier images abound all across the net), I will say that I have not yet seen an amplifier that could not benefit from a little intelligently applied TLC,  be it a $2k amp or a $100k one.

Point being, is that it is really..near impossible to say that one has a modded out Adcom, vs an ARC that is stock, and then get an opinion.

As the modification level or what was done to the Adcom, is an unknown except to that of the owner, but that the ARC is a known quality for at least some, as it is a known model with a known stock condition and sound quality. That the modded Adcom is an X that no one here outside of the owner of it can quantity and weigh against.

It is a good question, but it is lopsided for all but the OP... and we cannot help solve it.

I bought an Adcom 555 MKII, along with a GFP-565 preamp, brand new back in the 1980s and used them with Magnepans for about 5 years. I never had it modified and what teo_audio stated in his post about graininess makes a lot of sense to me. I subsequently used McCormack and Aragon high current amps over the next 10 years and, in my opinion, they both sounded very similar to each other and both were significant upgrades over the unmodified Adcom.
Over the past 5+ years I’ve used class D amps, stereo Class D Audio and Emerald Physics units and currently a pair of D-Sonic monoblock amps. All of these newer class D amps outperform all of the large, heavy class AB amps I’ve previously used by a wide margin.  They're better in every area I care about: low distortion, high power, high signal to noise ratio, powerful and realistic dynamics, solid and stable imaging, highly detailed and possessing an overall accuracy, smoothness and naturalness. 
If you’re looking for a significant upgrade, I’d suggest trying out at least one high quality class D amp.


Tim