Reference Anniversary and sigh of tube failure at 1100 hours

[TOGA]

enatai252, tubes are covered 90 days only. My preamp is 1 year old now. Hope my dealer
is knowing what they're doing as well as yours. tube sockets in my pre amp is very tight, the main board is bent during tube insertion, so afraid the main board and printed circuit will break >< during tube examination.

[cmalak]

Originally Posted by TOGA

tube sockets in my pre amp is very tight, the main board is bent during tube insertion, so afraid the main board and printed circuit will break during tube examination.

TOGA...the circuit board being bent is not good. I woul definitely have that checked out and while you are right the tubes are covered for only 90-days, so you will pick up the cost of that (although sometimes ARC will pick it up), if you need a new board (i.e., the preamp needs to go back for service), ARC will pick that up under the 3-year warranty coverage. Good luck.

[Dafos]

Toga, can you give us an update on the problems you encountered with your reference anniversary? I'm particulaly interested since I just picked up a reference before production finally halts. By the way, regarding the bent circuit board, I agree that the board does flex when inserting the tubes into the very tight tube sockets but any competent technician should know not to forcefully insert the tubes during examination.

[Asterisk]

I hope this doesn't become the trend but a few weeks ago, I lost the glow in one of the 6550's in the Power supply of my RefAnn. The sound is gone in one channel. The 6H30 beside the 6550 in the PS does light up including all of the 6H30's in the control unit. Talked with KD of ARC and He thinks it's a bad tube. He gave me some pointers on trouble shooting and tube swapping with the other channel but wasn't successful. I measured the supposedly bad tube but turned out to be fine. No visible deformed parts on the board nor any burnt smell.

Will have to bring it in for a check-up. I just hope it's an easy fix.

My Ref Ann is under 1000 hrs.

[TOGA]

Hi all, sorry for forgetting my own post, have been busy due to work.
A few weeks ago, technician from ARC dealer came to my house and we listened to music for hour
without any pop noise... what a bad luck. Later, it made a lot more often noise at night, but during the last week just before I packed it due to flood, it didn't quite make any noise, so I just keep using it for a week till the day I packed and moved them away. This is the update for noise from Ref 40.

For avsBuddy, I never had any chance to compare av8003 as a preamp vs ARC REF 40 because 1. they are 8 meters apart 2. don't wanna mess with all the cables in the back of 8003 3. I don't think it will have any chance against Ref40.

But as I miss the the music and some of the not-so-expensive stuffs are still left in the listening room. I gathered some that I used during the the 90's to set up a temporary 2ch system. If risk of flood arises, I will wrap them all with huge plastic sheet and pray that there will not leak.

The temp. system is now based on Marantz 8003.

I use Oppo BDP83 as CD Player feeding AV8003 with Diamond HDMI cable.
Then 8003 connect to Proceed HPA3 via 8 meters of balanced Kimber PBJ which drive Definitive BP2000 using Transparent Reference MM2 speaker cables.

The result is quite surprised to me as the sound is pretty good, It can make music, much better than I remember these same BP2000 did back in 1998.
May be due to performance of Transparent cables I used today rather than AV8003, but at least 8003 is in the chain here as an preamp and DAC, so it must be contribute something good here too.

Even in Pure Direct mode, I am not sure that 8003 work in pure analog domain or not, its volume seems digital. If you want high performance 2ch system, I would like to suggest you a true high performance analog preamp.

TOGA