Has anyone heard that ARC discontinued the Ref CD-9SE?

The ARC CD9se has been discontinued because their CD transport manufacturer stopped making the transport. My dealer told me and said he could give me back full price for mine (it’s only a few months old) if I wanted to upgrade to the Berkeley Alpha 3 DAC. I compared them in my system and while very close, the ARC sounded better. 
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No conspiracy theories needed to explain. 

I am not sure that ARC has not stocked up a bunch of drives for warrantee work. Manufacturers call for last buys from customers. Any reputable companies will stock up for many years of repairs. I believe they only discontinued selling new CD9se and the less expensive one.

OP,

The ARC CD9se is a spectacularly good DAC. I recently had my audio guy drop off a Berkeley Alpha 3 DAC for me to compare with my ARC CD9se. I was able to balance the loudness and switch between them. I had it for a couple weeks. The difference was microscopic... with the ARC sounding ever so slightly better (ARC ever so slightly warmer in the midrange and bass.... more listenable, the Berkeley a tiny bit more detailed). The Berkeley is a $22K DAC know to be one of the best currently on the market. Obviously I was comparing music streams. I have 2,000 CDs but can’t think of a reason to play them. They are more inconvenient and frequently of lower resolution than what I get through streaming. So even if I own the CD, I will stream it. .

For the price of one CD per month you get access to a nearly infinite ♾ amount of music through Qobuz or Tidal, much of it are higher resolution than red book. So, the time to switch has come. I dabbled for years and now that I own a good streamer there is no going back.

I trust ARC. The new owner is putting effort into running it even better than before. My dealer has spoken to him multiple times and I have received great feedback from him.