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My personal experience

Posted by FrankC (A) on July 10, 2015 at 14:12:04

In Reply to: About modifying units (dacs and preamps). posted by beppe61 on July 4, 2015 at 02:26:28:

I am a very non-techie kind of guy. I slept through my high school physics class, so I can barely tell you what a resistor does vs. a capacitor.

I've been an avid Audio Research linestage user since I got into the hobby many years ago. The first few were all stock units with NOS tubes. I had read many positive reviews with Steve Huntley of Great Northern Sound (GNSC). He recently closed shop and joined Resolution Audio. He used to work at Audio Research, so he is familiar with their design philosophies.

I bought an ARC LS-25 Mk I with GNSC reference level mods a while back. I can't honestly tell you what all the changes are even if I have it side-by-side with a stock unit except the obvious things like better capacitors and resistors were changed out as well as power supplies. But the sound was absolutely amazing. I had compared it (with stock powercords) at the time to a stock Ref 2 Mk II unit with $$$ Shunyata powercords. The Ref 2 won that round by a small margin, but many of the differences mentioned by listeners were similar to observations between the 6H30 tube vs. 6922s. The only thing I thought the Ref 2 did better was the larger scale of the soundstage and had better microdynamics. How much of that was due to the powercord, the tubes (I had Siemens 6922s in there), and warm up, I would never know as we've not do any other follow-up comparison.

I had recently upgraded to a Ref 2 Mk I with GNSC reference level mod. Although both are "reference level" mods. I can tell that the mods to the Ref 2 was much, much more sophisticated. I don't have a stock Ref 2 to do a side-by-side comparison as all my friends have since upgraded to Ref 3 and Ref 5s. But in my system, the difference I am hearing is much more than the results of that original test I conducted back then. I am hearing better layering depth-wise of the soundstage, much more texture, weight, and body to the sound. And I am not using any NOS tubes. All the tubes in there are either Russian or new stock tubes.

FrankC

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