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Audio Research Reference 5SE reliability

After reading the glowing revieuw on the Stereophile-website by Brian Damkroger on the ARC REF5SE there was a comment that: quote: by Audioware on nov 15, 2012,

"These pres are outstanding. However the problem is their poor reliability. 06 (six) of them were already on my services bench this year to fix problems with the transformer that feeds the dgital, the remote control and the on-off switch, circuits. It is a small xformer below the circuit board that burns out frequently. Another very serious problem is with the 6H30s filament regulators that do not stand for the increased current demanded by the new 6H30s intead of the old 6922s. ARC has to pay more attention to these problems!"

I already checked my dealer, who was really surprised and did not recognise these problems.

Comments will be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
sequence56
vladimir
346 posts
 
To add my 2c to Bifwynne's post and unless JL Audio has changed it, the JL Audio subwoofers impedance is an extremely low 1k Ohms.
bifwynne
2,206 posts
 
Vladimir, if you are referring to a self powered sub, and you are sure that it has a 1K ohm input impedance, which strikes me as low, you are overloading the Ref SE by a very wide margin. Confirm your stats and call Kal at ARC. If he confirms my suspicion, better call Tom Tutay.
anwar
119 posts
 
I don't want to hijack this thread as my original question was about how hot the Ref 5SE runs.

I want to correct a few things here. JL Audio f113 single-ended input impedance is 10k Ohms (balanced unspecificed). But the f113 sub was never connected directly to Ref 5SE but to Bryston 10B-SUB active crossover.

So here are my connections:

Ref 5SE ====> Bryston 10B-SUB XLR (impedance=20k)
10B-SUB low pass ====> JL Audio f113 (10k or 20k unknown)
10B-SUB hi pass ====> McIntosh MC452 (22k)

I've tried connecting Ref 5SE directly to MC452, then f113 to MC452 output, that means only one set of REF 5SE output used. There is no difference to 5SE running temperature. But I noticed less background noise.
bifwynne
2,206 posts
 
Anwar, seems like you just squeeked under the wire. You might still want to call Kal to get his view on whether you might gain any further sound improvement if the output impedancce could be tweaked up just a bit more.

Cheers

BIF
pabrognara
12 posts
 
Hi everybody.
Currently I´m testing a REF 5 used unit to evaluate sound and finally buy a brand new 5se. From what I heard in comparison to my previous VTL 6.5 was a stunning sound, deeper and punchier bass, and finally the most impressive mid and highs, never fatiguing. Anyway sounds terrific. BUT I found a problem that´s happening and doubt wheter is the unit, energy or some incompatibility with rest of gears. Here I´m connecting REF 5 by XLR to Paganini DAC and to Krell EVO 600e amps. Here´s the issue: sometimes, when changing volume level during a track, after 30secs or so, the sound cuts for a milisecond time and returns "instantly". I dont know if It really has to do with this unit, but I´m really worry If will get the same issue on my possible brand new unit. Never experienced It before with any preamp.
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