audio research REF 150

@Pinkus -- is your reference (pun) to the Ref 180 a tongue in cheek quip, or is there a Ref 180 prototype out there? If true, I can't wait for it to come out for all the reasons Taters says.

As a long-time owner of the Ref 110, powering Maggie 3.6R's, the 150 should be plenty of power for just about anything. I loved the 110 - it was solid, bloomy, no-nonsense, and built like a tank. A beautiful piece of audio work.

@Pinkus -- is your reference (pun) to the Ref 180 a tongue in cheek quip, or is there a Ref 180 prototype out there? If true, I can't wait for it to come out for all the reasons Taters says.

Pinkus is touting the much believed (but I believe undeserved) criticsm of Audio Research of churning product much quicker than the competition and that the company is marketing driven rather than customer-driven. If one analyzes objectively the product cycles at ARC, you will see new product intros in 3-5 year cycles (with an average of 4 years in between models). I do not think this is much different than most of the competition. Furthermore, having been an ARC owner now for some 7 years or so, I believe that each move up within the product line and from an older model to a newer model has yielded performance improvements consistent with the price differentials. But there will always be haters and that's fine, just not very useful in terms of their contributions to threads such as this where folks are trying to make informed purchase decisions.

I'm with Cmalak. Pinkus must have an ax to grind as his comment contributed nothing to the op's question. Furthermore, the improvements in the last few iterations of ARC ref amps and preamps have been quite significant and all for the better.

@Cmalak - interesting point. In some ways, ARC seems a company that is clinging to its mom-and-pop identity even though its an international company.

Whatever, though. They make beautiful products that know how to make music be as lifelike as possible