ARC VSi75SE v. MF Nu-Vista 800

I love Harbeths. They need lots of current to wake them up. 
they sound really good with tubes but a solid state amp will drive them to their full potential. If you can swing it, look into Hegel H390 or H590. 
Good luck. 

@cundare2 Back when I still owned the Harbeth 30.1, I borrowed two amps from my friends to test. One was the Moonriver 404 integrated amp -- one of the worst amps I have ever tried. The other one was Pass Labs INT-25. It was very impressive but lagged behind in terms of dynamics. Finally tried it with Luxman 590AXII ... that was the ticket!

Now I know this might cause some heartburn for a few Audio Research fans, but I found the ARC I/50 to be underwhelming. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice piece of kit but you're paying a lot for the AR brand name. Right after I auditioned the ARC, I bought an Audio Hungary Qualiton a50i which, IMO, was a much better sound and value than the I/50. 

I later sold the 30.1 and bought SHL5+. The pairing with this speaker and Qualiton a50i was sublime. Oh, and the a50i is auto-biased, no need to take it to a technician for something as simple as re-biasing the amp. I mean who does that in this day and age?

Also, I'm not a fan of the Luxman sound in general. But it was a very good pairing with Harbeth M30.1. Not so much when I got the HL5+, which IMO and unlike other Harbeth models, is better driven by tube amplification.

In SS, I much prefer Accuphase and Vitus. You really get the best of both worlds, i.e. tube and integrated with these two brands.

@ghdprentice To be clear, my comments were specific to the i/50. It’s in a very competitive price bracket and I don’t think it’s a particularly good value given some other tube integrateds in the same ballpark. Apart from that, I am a huge fan of the Audio Research sound. I have owned VSi75 and GSi75 in the past and enjoyed them. But, IMO, the real magic starts at and above units retailing for > $15K.

I also love their preamps and consider them to be some of the best you can buy regardless of price. In fact, I might be getting the Ref 6SE in the near future.

Having said that, Audio Research doesn’t have a monopoly on ’natural musical perspective’, and neither are the AR owners the only ones who understand natural music :) There are many ways to get there.

@cundare2 Please keep in mind that my experience was/is with Harbeth M30.1 and SHL5+. It is quite possible that C7-ES3s are a different animal altogether. I have owned P3esr and 30.1, and still own SHL5+ (home office) and 40.2 (main system). Incidentally, the C7s are the only ones I didn’t like when I auditioned them. But later, I heard a pair at a friend’s house and was quite impressed. I can only assume they were not driven properly when I auditioned them in person.

The reason I proposed a stout SS amp to drive them is because I believe the Harbeths already give you a tube-like presentation on their own. Adding tubes (with the exception of SHL5+) or warm sounding SS can be too much of a good thing. Secondly, they really shine with a ton of power and current. I agree that the sound can be more than adequate with many amps including INT or XA25. I was quite happy driving the 30.1 with tube amps and even PL INT-25 and told myself that it couldn’t really get any better. But once I put the Luxman in the system, the synergy was off the charts. The Luxman’s lively presentation was a good balancing act given the slightly darker sounding character of 30.1s. It was also better than the Pass Labs INT-25. If you are sold on Pass Labs, then perhaps INT-60 might be a better option to really give them the current they are craving for. So yes, the lower-powered amps can be ’more than adequate’ but IME more power allows them to reach their full potential.