I have been following this thread and finally thought I'd dive in for a little balance from Judge Judy and other critics. There's just no way someone can go to one place and hear one product and then to another place in a different room and system and have any value to stating the virtues of one product vs. another.
">>"Terminally vapid" Boring, dull, etc.<<
Characteristic of all ARC products."
Oh? All? Would this also include the SP-6, SP-8, SP-10, LS5, PH2, D70, D115, M100, D250, VT130, VT150? I have much experience with these models and I would not characterize any as boring. There is much harmonic richness, ambience, bloom, musicality with these products.
In its time, the SP-10 had no peers and I listened to a ton of products out there hoping to avoid dealing with this 15-tube 2-chassis product; the SP-10 won. Eight years later I followed this with the awesome PH2/LS5/VT130 that is anything but boring. Anyone who would claim such has their brain on the other side of Mars.
The one issue I always had with ARC was their lack of consistency delivered from one product line to the next. The preamps between the SP-10 and LS5 were worse and worse.....way too analytical to me. They weren't boring...they were simply unmusical! But thousands of others felt differently as shown by the sales of the SP-11, SP-15, LS1 and that dreadful LS2. (Sorry Guido, I couldn't help myself.) And shortly after the LS5, the cycle of unmusical preamps started again. Maybe that has changed again with the Ref2 or Ref3?
I have since changed to BAT, Aesthetix and CAT products as I have found them to be more refined in their tonal coherency, frequency extremes and low level resolution compared to the ARC products I owned and the new models available at the time. After hearing other products and my system becoming more and more resolving, I found the ARC presentation to be more and more too fatiguing for me.
The LS25 II was under serious consideration vs. my LS5 but I was not overly impressed. The LS25 was detailed but lacked the LS5's dimensional magic. I stayed with the LS5. It took the BAT 31SE to better the LS5 in key ways, much more foundation and power in the lowest octave, and a far more tonally coherent (not fatiguing) top end. The wonderful thing was that all I had loved about the LS5 was there in the BAT. The BAT had kept the performers at the plane of the speakers and behind. The LS5 brought the performers way out into the room which in time I came to like less and less. Direct comparisons at two dealers and my home showed me it was more than specific system synergy. The BAT 31SE end up being far superior to the line stage I had owned and enjoyed immensely for 7 years.
Two years later, enter the Aesthetix Callisto Signature. It's a very different experience here. Never had I heard a line stage impress me so greatly across the board. I remembered how the 31SE did the bass. The Callisto takes this to another level. And unlike the BAT, the Callisto renders a mulitude of low-level detail in the highest frequencies. The LS5 never came close to this. And the LS25 did not steal the show vs. the LS5 in this regard either. The Callisto and Calypso are very very similar except for one most important attribute: portrayal of space. I am so impressed when I hear the neutrality and resolution of the Calypso at a local audiophile's (Jadem6) home. But a changeover to the Callisto and that awesome 3-dimensionality is there like you hear from a real performance. The stage exceeds far beyond the boundaries, images are not 1-foot wide - they are so lifelike. A return back to the Calypso and that awesome openness is significantly diminshed. This is one area where I would have trouble going for the Calypso. Even with the BAT's soft top end and lower level resolution, it was far more lifelike in its portrayal of the harmonics, decays, images and space and this alone brought on the emotional connection. The LS5 did the same for me but not at well as the BAT or Callisto.
So that's a little bit of personal history that hopefully gives you some things to consider when you compare in your home and at the dealers. It can really be tough to choose from the strengths between some very impressive products out there.
Good luck in your quest here.
John
