Audio Research Pre with SS Amp
 

Hi all.
What is your favorite combo of an AR Pre with a SS Amp?
I'm not a fan of tubes but coming of Dartzeel Amp i think the sweetness of an AR Pre will be wellcome to a pair of Classe Omega Monoblocks.

Electrocompaniet Nemos have been a good partner for the Ref5SE so far. Jim Thiel is a believer of "watts is cheap" when designing his speakers.

I'm using ARC Ref10 with D'Agostino Momentum Stereo. An excellent match IMO.

Jim Thiel was a believer in "watts are cheap." Mr. Thiel passed away unfortunately a few years ago.

Was sometimes suggests that he might have changed his mind

I'm aware of his passing. Such a shame what the new owners are doing to his company.

D'agostino if you want to get as close as possible to all ARC tube sound and liquidity but will solid state transparency. Lamm hybrid if you want a bit more texture and richer base tones but with a bit of a reduction in soundstage and dimensionality. I heard the Dag/ARC combo in my house and loved it. Heard Lamm and ARC at a dealer and loved that.

Maybe I'm stupid, but I don't understand the "not a fan of tubes" comment. My ref75 has no tube sound that I can detect. It just does everything right. I had an mc452 before this, and the little arc has better bass control in my opinion.

So why not pair the arc pre with its soul mate? An arc amp, of course!

PS... Arc has solid state amps too!

I'm not saying tubes aren't a right choice. I love music and understand your opinion but as you know, there are other different ways.

It really depends on what speakers you use.

If you use something like an B&W 800 Diamond where the impedance range can fluctuate very wildly across the frequency range, it may be hard to find a tube amp that can manage that speaker well. You can of course get the ARC Reference 750 but there might be other issues with power consumption/heat/cooling that some prefer not to deal with.

I do find the ARC works incredibly well with a lot of SS power amps.

I've had equally good results with the Plinius SA-Reference and Bel Canto REF500Ms.