Quote:
Originally Posted by jpgr4blu
I agree that the Anniversary is different in character than the Ref 10. Some would say the Anniversary edition is better and I understand that position.
I used a 10 percent better example which is personal to me and may be overstated. But, in fact, the sounds of the 2 are very close and largely a matter of tonality with the sound of the 10 being slightly more transparent but possibly losing some magic of the Anniversary. In fact, Oddeophile hits on an interesting topic of the coupling capacitors. For a while, the capacitors in the Anniversary edition were creating problems according to some rumors but undeniably could not be sourced by ARC as the manufacturer could not produce them fast enough and/or went out of business. I always felt that ARC made some changes on the Ref10 due to its inability to source the capacitors used in the Ref 40.
In any event, I would opt for the Ref 40 if there is any significant price difference. Unless ARC makes a preamp that is significantly better, I too will keep my Ref 40 for years to come.
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I remember reading somewhere that ARC were suffering too many failures with the Teflon caps from that supplier - the supplier still exists (the name I can only vaguely recall - I think it might have been ASC capacitors) and did not go out of business. The TRT Gold coloured Stealth caps (these are not Teflon but a hybrid of some sort) were substituted instead due to the number of failures. ARC have been using Stealth caps since at least the LS25.