[George Prentice]

I moved from solid state preamp about twenty years ago, Phono stage shortly after. I ran a Pass x350 ss amp for fifteen years or so. I switched to a Audio Research Ref160s a year ago or so. The amps sound was so different… just shockingly. I couldn’t even consider putting the Pass back in. I thought long and hard about the differences… because the drop in slam was very significant, but the bass is much better. One thing with out question is the ARC amp is way… way closer to real music.

My conclusion was that the slam thing can be somewhat artificial. The Pass has a lean midrange and not fully opened up bass (laid out equally across the spectrum) and it is really fast at transients. This creates exaggerate rise in bass we call slam. But the ARC has fully fleshed out mid-range and highly detailed bass… which is very natural sounding… the rise and decay is what you hear in live music… especially acoustic. That ss slap tickles my fancy… but the detailed bass of the ARC is really much much better.

The improvement in my system from going to a good tube amp really have me scratching my head why I did not do this… well 40 years ago when I first heard a Audio Research tube amp… oh yeah, I remember… the cost.