Has anyone heard the Ref 3?

Oneobgyn, your poor experience with the L2 was unfortunately my fault. One of the XLRs I brought over and had been using turned out to be faulty causing a significant compromise to the sound. When we listened to your Ref 3, Vahallas were used bypassing this problem. Consequently, I dont think your experience with the L2 was accurate.

A few weeks ago, I had a Ref 3 to compare in my system and to me, the L2 was superior. The Lamm was more natural and transparent with a lower noise floor. I felt like it was more pure while the Ref 3 had a slight agenda. The differences were not drastic, as expected with components at this level, but evident under critical listening.

Well Ethan we should try the demo again because I would still have to disagree. I am uncertain what you mean that the Ref 3 "has a slight agenda"

Hi Oneobgyn, I would be glad to bring over the L2 again. To fair, we should probably use the same cables on both pres this time. By "slight agenda," I meant I noticed some coloration that accounted for the difference.

Ethann

I might ask you--how do you know it wasn't your L2 that was colored and the Ref 3 wasn't?

Well all this is subjective but one test I did was run my Lamm phono stage directly to my Lamm amp to hear what the L2 was doing to the sound. From what I can tell, the L2 was quite neutral.