Ref 10 arrived!

[Bavarian05]

Just picked it up last night. What an amazing piece of gear. It always surprises me how much music is buried in our discs or LPs that we just typically don't get to hear.
The soundstage is immense, great sense of calm strength. Bass is much more solid and mid/highs are much more delineated and clear. What a treat.

[George Prentice]

Very Nice! Looks like your have Olympica 3's for your speakers. I thought I had an unusually high proportion invested in electronics vs speakers. Looks like you are ever further along that continuum. On the other hand, I alway found you benefit a lot from electronics. Looks like a great system.

[jdandy]

Jason.......Congratulations, she's a beauty. Quite a jump up from the Ref 3. I like the face of the the Ref 10 but I am not a fan of the plexiglass tops at all. Just my personal preference but if I owned the Ref 10 it would be with the metal covers.

You have many hours of break-in ahead of you. Keep the music playing.

[Bavarian05]

Originally Posted by jdandy

Jason.......Congratulations, she's a beauty. Quite a jump up from the Ref 3. I like the face of the the Ref 10 but I am not a fan of the plexiglass tops at all. Just my personal preference but if I owned the Ref 10 it would be with the metal covers. You have many hours of break-in ahead of you. Keep the music playing.

That's funny. I have the exact opposite preference.
I love the plexiglass tops, but am not really a fan of the overall look when compared to the symmetrical "old school" ARC stuff.
The touch screen is cool and very easy to use, but I would gladly take two knobs and a row of buttons given the choice. ;-)

[Bavarian05]

Originally Posted by George Prentice

Very Nice! Looks like your have Olympica 3's for your speakers. I thought I had an unusually high proportion invested in electronics vs speakers. Looks like you are ever further along that continuum. On the other hand, I alway found you benefit a lot from electronics. Looks like a great system.

Yeah. I kind of worried about the same thing. My speakers are the Olympica II. The III's would have been too much for my smaller room. I think my main bottleneck is currently cabling. I am using decent Audioquest Cables for now (two runs of CV-8 for bi-wiring the speakers, Columbia XLR's between all sources and pre/amp). Cables will likely be my next upgrade. Way too many to choose from and Transparent is great option however they are ridiculously expensive in my opinion (especially once you go balanced in their line). This way I realistically never need to worry about a preamp going forward and can just keep upgrading as funds allow...

[cmalak]

Jason...a big congrats! Quite the jump from the Ref 3 to the Ref 10! Did you consider the Ref 5SE at all or you just wanted to go for the destination pre without any stop overs along the way ?

[Bavarian05]

Originally Posted by cmalak

Jason...a big congrats! Quite the jump from the Ref 3 to the Ref 10! Did you consider the Ref 5SE at all or you just wanted to go for the destination pre without any stop overs along the way ?

Yes and yes. :-)
Love the idea of being absolutely done with preamp buying (forever likely...maybe?) and can now focus on source and cable upgrades.

[cmalak]

Well congrats and enjoy it for many years to come

[Bavarian05]

Originally Posted by cmalak

Well congrats and enjoy it for many years to come

Thank you cmalak.

[Quin]

Congratulations. Quite a jump from Ref3! Did you decide to go with a SS amp? Enjoy that new toy!