WOW Thanks a bundle to all you good folks for your responses and emails.
Mrtennis/Musicslug
I am also suspecting that my brain is (major?) part of the problem. I have been in critical listening mode for the last one year till I reached this point where I have no complains. I guess it was both taxing and changed my listening style from relaxation to analysis and frustration. Giving it a break seems to be a good idea as I have noticed that now when I am listening I am concentrating too much on details as though still trying to find a fault.
I also agree with the statement about instruments sounding real. In fact my consultant says the same that for him there is no SS or tube sound there is just music and that is what he tries to bring out in a system.
Vinyl is definitely something I would like to stay away from not due to any other reason except convinience of digital (PC based music) and lack of background.
For all folks who questioned ditching the ARC gear the reason was than when I bought ARC there was no distribution/dealer in Switzerland. Sending it to Germany for every little change/fix etc was a pain in terms of customs plus I was not happy with my dealer and had some reliability issues with Ref110 which took sometime to resolve pushing me further away from this gear. Now that ARC does have distribution in Switzerland I may consider going back provided I can ascertain that my reason for dissatisfaction is lack of tubes. Even in this case I would try to stick to some European manufacturer as repairs etc are much easier and I didn't like ARC in terms of manual biasing and QA issues with Ref110.
For all folks suggesting tube pre/DAC what I have experienced and heard from other knowledgable people is that although a tube amp is the most painful tube component in terms of maintenance and weight unfortunately it is also the one having the most profound effect on sound. Therefore changing just to a tube DAC or pre will not give one the correct idea on tube sound.
Pubul57 OTL should be fine as the peaks have a pretty benign curve. From Stereophile review of Empress:
"The Peak Consult Empress was too heavy for me to lift it on to a high stand for the farfield acoustic measurements. I therefore had to window out the reflection of its sound from the floor in front of it, which will limit the midrange resolution of the response measurements.
With that caveat in mind, the Empress's sensitivity was slightly higher than average, at an estimated 88.5dB(B)/2.83V/m, though this is less than the specified 90dB. Its impedance remains between unusually narrow limits (fig.1), only rising above 6 ohms above the audioband and never dropping below 4.4 ohms. Its electrical phase angle is also small, with the only questionable combination of low magnitude and high phase angle occurring at 31Hz: 5.4 ohms and 45 degrees. Even then, music rarely has high energy at this frequency, meaning that the Empress will be a relatively easy amplifier load."
As far as I know peaks are normally mated with Berning in Hifi shows in US and they are OTLs right?
Don't get me wrong on Audia stuff its really good (all class A and tube like) however its easy to blame the gear when you are not happy (guess it's human nature). The only issue could be that the damping factor of Audia amp is 85 but I have not seen any other SS amps with less DF (Pass X60 has DF of 150 and is reputed to be quiet close to tube sound). Maybe its just one variable so I should not put so much focus there.
I am not too much keen to listen to a tube set up as you can't gauge the sound difference in a show room or someone else's house in my experience.
So to me the 2 choices at thi spoint in time seem to be either give it more time or try a tube poweramp. Any other suggestions?
-Thanks
