Has anyone compared the ARC REF 3 and 3se phono stage?

[George Prentice]

I haven’t seen much yet on reviews. Since they did the same kind of internal part upgrades as on the REF 6SE, it should be significant given where it is in the signal chain. All my other stuff is up to date... hard not to wonder if I should upgrade.

[Banter]

I am also sitting on the fence too on this!

[djcxxx]

The 3SE was not a major sonic upgrade over my 2SE. This was in contrast to the 6SE from the 5SE which was a major, easily discernible, improvement in sound stage size, depth, instrument timbre, and clarity. To be fair the 3SE was added with the 6SE in place, so I did not do the “proper” experiment of adding the 3SE into the 5SE chain first.

[George Prentice]

Originally Posted by djcxxx

The 3SE was not a major sonic upgrade over my 2SE. This was in contrast to the 6SE from the 5SE which was a major, easily discernible, improvement in sound stage size, depth, instrument timbre, and clarity. To be fair the 3SE was added with the 6SE in place, so I did not do the “proper” experiment of adding the 3SE into the 5SE chain first.

Thanks for your comment. It makes sense the way you did it so you could detect the increment the 3se alone had on the system. How many hours did you have on your 6SE at the time? If the 6SE was broken in, that would be a great test. Although the breakin time on the 3se can make it difficult.

[djcxxx]

The 6SE had about 250 hours. Interestingly the 6SE sounded quite excellent out of the box. The 5SE took about 100-150 hours to bloom and kept getting better up to 500 hours. I believe I read somewhere this was related to the capacitors.