Best ARC Solid State power to match ARC Ref 5 Pre

ARC's preamps can be very, very good, but their amps are quite overrated in my opinion - they all use copious amounts of global feedback, whether tube or solid-state, and while generally transparent and resolving, feature the closed-in dead quality and two-dimensionality that amps using feedback suffer from. In addition, many of their pentode-based tube amps cut corners in ways that are inexcusable given their price, such as the lack of individual biasing for tube pairs. In any event, stay as far away as possible from ARC's digital amps with Wilsons - I know a fellow with a new ARC digital amp (I think it's the DS225) and Sophias and it is exactly as I would have expected - that Focal tweeter with a digital amp is just awful.

No-global-feedback amps, such as darTZeel or Ayre, tend to be very expensive. If they are beyond your budget, I would look at the Rowland Model 2/6/8/9 series, which can be had for very reasonable prices on the used market. Like ARC gear, they are fully differential balanced. I agree that the Lamm solid-state amps are very fine, but they are quite expensive, even used, and the Class A-biased model runs really hot. Both Lamm and Rowland work well with Wilson, especially Lamm (Wilson and Lamm have frequently shown together at CES's).

I have a friend with a Ref 5 - it's a really fine preamp once broken in.

Bywynne:

If you have the opportunity, try to get a darTZeel, Ayre, Rowland 625, or no-feedback triode tube amp into your system to compare to your ARC. There are indeed a lot of different factors that affect amplifier performance, but some are more important than others and global feedback is now known to be genuinely harmful to natural sound. The vast majority of designers still use it, however, because it's quite difficult to make a circuit stable, particularly a high-powered amp circuit, without global feedback, and most people buying amps don't know the difference.

Last month, I spent four nights in a row with a good friend and his all-Audio Research system, including VTM 200 monoblocks, plus big Wilsons in his large, purpose-built two-channel room. He recently demo'd a darTZeel and a new darTZeel is now on the way to him. 12 db. of global feedback is a lot, but even 2 db. changes the presentation - the difference is not subtle.