Well tempers go here and there, ARC is not on my list anymore after hearing others either,, I did own the LS3 and a 7, one tube one solid state, both built very well and well just not the most emotional sounding or musical in a sense, but to be fair these models are only the mid grade, kinda dry to be honest, would I buy again?? Not sure but if it made magic in a given system sure, but I find the ARC sound to finicky and yes in my opinion a somewhat "House sound", really have found much more universally friendly preamps myself and even at far less money, but the big names will alway raise a fuss in the audiophile community, basically if we all believed that a Mark levinson amp is the end all be all for every situation and price then it would be a perfect world, so expand the horizons and use your experiance to tilt the tone of the system the way you want it. Go for ARC if you are simply happy with the unit you have and want to get more of it out of a model up the food chain, nothing wrong with it.
