Audio Research Ref 5 preamp

Well Dev, this is a most interesting development indeed. For many of us who have been listening and participating in this thread with the attendant emotional fluctuations, re-evaluated cost/enjoyment ratios and personal reflections on what it all means anyway, now are no doubt quietly and patiently waiting for the latest report. Well, I am anyway :)

I would not mind an audition as well. I'll pay shipping both ways and pay 100.00 for letting me listen to the REF 5.

Dev, you just wrote it much better than me! But I got a similar improvement in my ARC system CD8 + Ref5 moving it to a Finite Element Pagode Master Reference rack.
This rack is unhappily very expensive, but was one improvement I could hear! Curiously, at that time I also owned a Dartzeel preamp that was much less sensitive to placing.

Micro, what was the change contributed by the ref5 before you moved to a new rack? I wonder if the rack then should be mated to the the REF5 to further improve it?

I bought the Pagode rack some years ago when I still had the Ref3 and CD7. I had an old Target that was solid and had a special decoupled upper shelf for the turntable that I used for the CD7, but I was astonished with difference when I moved the system - everything become more solid and bass become quicker, voices were more defined and articulate, becoming more dramatic. After a few months I returned to the old rack to try another system in the Pagode and it was a big step back - some parts of the music seemed blurred.