ARC's new REF-75

I haven't been pleased by Audio Research amplification for a very long time, and that dissatisfaction only mushroomed over the past dozen years or so. Keep in mind I've sold and owned ARC in the distant past. I'm long out of the industry. I've cited ARC as tragic evidence that hifi took a wrong turn, continuing to release products built more for ego than music. The entire REF line has sounded so far just about as far removed from convincing musicality as one can get using vacuum tubes, so I had hopes that the REF 75, being a modest implementation of a simpler, rethought ARC sound, might reverse their long slide into toneless asceticism.

I guess not. I heard the REF 75/ Wilson combination, and every other ARC installation at the show. I suppose one can get so accustomed to that sound so as to interpret it as "grainless" if all other comparisons are to amps that have more grain, but that's not what I heard. In fact, one of the distinguishing "features" of every modern ARC tube amp I've heard (and I've heard just about all of them) is the pervasiveness and persistence of distracting sonic grain. I'll go further and say there's midrange grunge, too, as in the subtle crossover notch grit common to all push-pull tube amps voiced to sound like solid state and tilted to over-resolution. Another common "feature" of the REF series, including this new one, is spatial "field flattening" and vocal glare. But again, if all you listen to are amps that are worse in these respects, the REF might be heard as smooth and articulate.

Not to me.

Some of this is surely the fault of current production tetrodes and pentodes, but some of it originates in design. The REF 75 sounded tonally bleached, with incomplete note decay. It was revealing of leading edge detail and very competent with hard-but-not-harsh sounds like single-event percussives and strong string plucks. It lost the rest of the note too soon. many simultaneous transient events didn't put the amp in a good light. Unless congestion upon crescendo sounds normal to you. And I don't forgive it insufficient break-in time because these same traits are exhibited by every other REF amp in the series as well.

The svelte Audience solid state amp was better in all these respects and I say that as someone who has never had a single year of my life without tube amps amplifying music for me. The McIntosh autoformer SS amps are more musically convincing. And lots of non-mainstream tube amps will trample the REF 75 if you're judging by musical performance instead of wanting to listen to square waves.

I'll say one thing in the ARC's defense. Most of the "name" tube amps of substantial power at the show were lashed to crossover-intensive multi-driver speakers, so on top of the compromises in the amps, you were listening to compression and subtle grunge at the crossover points of the speakers. The two together aren't a recipe for convincing music reproduction, but they're certainly a recipe for something....else.

The REF 75 wasn't nearly the only disappointment at the Newport Show, but it was one of the more egregious let downs.

Phil

Phil- So you are saying the only time you heard the Ref 75 was at The Show?

I heard the REF 75 at the show. In a room full of other people who were uttering superlatives. I disagreed with them. While I will hear a REF 75 again in a more domestic or dealer setting, given that I heard nothing out of character with the rest of the REF line, I have no reason to expect this amp to impress me under different circumstances. The people who are praising the REF 75 express admiration for other REF amps, including the toneless REF 250. None of them are convincing to me. It does look good in a more subtle expression of the ARC industrial aesthetic. OK, there's a compliment.

But this is a common phenomenon in high end audio: a vaunted brand develops a house sound bereft of convincing musicality, and its following reveres this enough to render it a new, if wrongneaded, reference. Whether referenced gear bears any resemblance to how real instruments and voices actually sound becomes a disregarded criterion.

This amp, in particular, because of its rumored promise and (well, in a hifi way of thinking) moderate pricing, is Exhibit A in the parade of proofs at the show that hifi is largely off the rails, and most reviewers are happily in the lead.

In any other industry, ARC would be considered an insignificant and marginally-successful company. In high end audio, it has a magnified brand and it has stayed true to its ardent commitment to build quality. But now it is sonically-uninspiring and generic, in my view. Having forfeited, due to musically-indifferent products, the reverence once justifiably granted ARC by music lovers, it no longer merits default consideration by them. I was hoping this amp would signal a turn back to musically-legitimate amplification but unfortunately I didn't hear even the briefest indicator such might be so.

If you're an exhibitor and you can't give me even a glimmer of hope that your new amp is musically-persuasive while you believe it is, what are you doing? Enough with the excuses. I don't mean to pick on the REF 75. But as one of the more egregious let-downs at the show, it stands in for a freight train's load of aural trouble that was, collectively, the Newport show. Quality was largely on the fringes. The mainstream in high end is mostly off the rails, having remembered the "high" and forgotten "fidelity."

Phil

I guess you don't like ARC...Or just fed up with the state of the industry in general?

>>I guess you don't like ARC....Or just fed up with the state of the industry in general?<<

Some of both. There was a time when I loved ARC products. Today ARC makes some good preamps, and their DACs have been sonically interesting. It's in their power amps where they've taken a wrong turn, in my view.

I've been spending my own money on audio for a little over 40 years. It's not that I'm so old as that I started young, and I'm old *enough* to have experienced a more successful time in the industry. Our industry has dug itself into a hole and not being happy with nearly complete cultural irrelevance, it is digging faster. There are many reasons for this, but among them is products like the REF 75: over-resolving at the expense of natural tone; current into any load at the expense of nuance and clarity; leftover grunge due to the topology; and in this case lock you into one power tube by one maker.

I sent a friend to the show who is not an audiophile. He appreciates my systems, which has led him to begin considering spending real money on audio. I said, "considering." He didn't go to the show the same day as me. But I wanted to know what a music lover and musician who has had little exposure to our industry today, likes, dislikes, thinks. I didn't prompt him about anything. Just suggested he go, hear everything he can.

"I heard a lot of sound but not much that sounded like music." That was his first assessment. He loved what he heard in one room and one room only: The Audience room when the ClairAudient One was playing. A tiny $1800 speaker blew away the giants. Now, that did happen to be the best sound at the show, though I wish they had demo'd the 2+2. And it was the best sound of the show because it was the most coherent and it struck the right balance between resolution and tone. It was also playing via the most natural solid state amp at the show.

He couldn't really relate to much of the rest of it, though some rooms sounded closer to music than others. His conclusion was that the worst rooms were those with the most imposing gear. With a few exceptions, that's my experience too. If it's garish and imposing, it's probably not going to sound much like music. The little REF 75 is only small in the context of the many bigger amps on display, but it's by no means small, alone. It does exemplify however the prevailing sound that's come to be associated with high-end cred: cold, spatially flattened, inorganic, super clean, resolving beyond the actual acoustic experience of hearing music performed, bleached of tone, overdamping of decay, incapable of communicating the seduction and full emotion of the music passing through the gear.

And the trouble is, once you no longer know what the full emotion and tonal integrity of music sounds like in real terms, then something synthetic becomes the new measure. That's where we are now, and that's what was abundant at the Newport show. I could not reconcile the groupthink enthusiasm I heard expressed for 97% of the gear demonstrated, with what I was actually hearing.

But there was beauty and truth in about 3% of it, and that's what keeps my interest. It just wasn't coming from the likes of ARC, Wilson, VTL, Scaena, Focal, et al. As long as the mythmakers in the industry, and the people who extend them credibility, believe that Wilson and Focal, to spotlight two egregious offenders, make musically convincing speakers, the whole industry will be a headscratcher to anyone coming from outside who can't reconcile their sonics with how music heard in performance actually sounds. In high end audio, it's the 3% who get it in the realm of right.

Phil