ARC VSi75SE v. MF Nu-Vista 800

classicalreflections:  So you're saying that the biasing procedure is much simpler on the VSi  than on the i/50?  You don't have to open up the chassis, clamp probes onto a resistor, etc.?

@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.

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.

@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.

arafiq: Great feedback, exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.

Re: the C7 v. the 30.1, those two models are very similar, identical drivers & ports (admittedly arranged differently), similar cabinets, impedance curves, etc. The 30.1 is nominally 1 dB less efficient, so when I hear that a particular amp can drive the 30.1 well, I assume that I can extrapolate that recommendation to the C7.

FWIW, Alan Shaw claims that the C7 is his personal favorite model when driven with at least 80wpc. However, the XA25 is a high-current device (10A in the specs), and I suspect that its 30-ish wpc (into 6 ohms) is more powerful than you’d expect. And then there’s Herb Reichart’s high praise for the Harbeth+XA25 combination in his Stereophile 30.2 review. But still...

Your comments comparing the Lux & Pass are interesting. But I’d be even more interested in context. What size room, the type of content you played, volume levels, mounting, powered sub crossover freq, that sort of thing. I’m sure you’d agree that in this type of comparison, those details can make all the difference. In fact, your personal C7 experience seems to confirm Shaw’s (and Reichert’s) comments about these easy-to-drive yet finicky thin-walled boxes. Reichert found that even eliminating the blu-tak attaching his 30.2’s to Sound Anchor stands degraded their sound. And Shaw claims that, despite being designed to be insensitive to differences in cabling & ampflification technology, simply removing the grill cloths compromises his design. So again, devil in the details.

At this point, after digging through offerings from Levinson, PrimaLuna, ARC, Hegel, HiFi Rose, and Ayre, it looks like the XA25 & the Nu-Vista integrateds offer the best compromise among sonics, cost, connectivity/functionality, and form factor -- at least for my particular application. Even the INT-60, great as it must be, would not fit my system & room.

Unfortunately, there’s no way for me to hear these components before buying. All I can do is have long conversations with people who have had first-hand experience. And so far, there’s been no consensus about whether the XA25 is a good match with small-to-medium sized Harbeths like the C7 & 30.2. Many people, including trusted reviewers in Stereophile & TAS, describe in detail how beautifully they work together. But others, like you and Pass Labs’s & Harbeth’s own customer service reps, recommend more power.  Sigh.

One final question: Thinking of presentation, the things that the XA25 is noted for: holographic, three-dimensional soundstage, reproduction of room ambiance ("the players are in your room" v. "you are with the players in their own room"), realistic image size, Quad-ESL-like coherence, etc. -- did you lose any of that with the Luxman?