At the risk of having all the ARC fans on my case: I see that Lamm also uses vacuum tube rectifier circuits in his power supply. Thus, far I have not read any Lamm preamp owner crib about excessive while noise levels. (if this is not the case, please point me to the appropriate post). I compare w/ Lamm 'cuz the Ref2 Mk2 is close in price range to the Lamm L2 Ref & is more expensive than the LL2 regular/deluxe.
It seems that if ARC was to charge $10,000 for the Ref2 Mk2, this noise aspect should never have been an issue. What if one were to use the ARC Ref2 Mk2 with a horn system? Problem exacerbated? I went to the Stereophile archives & dug this out from a year 2000 review. Seems like it was on the Mk1 version but,unfortuntely, it seems that it's applicable to the Mk2 version too. Your experience, Classicjazz, seems consistent:
"The Reference Two was quiet for a tube amp, with just a trace of thin white noise when no signal was fed it—a far narrower spectrum than the usual "tube rush." Still, there was a slight price to pay for the raised noise floor compared to the best solid-state preamps: on classical recordings, lower resolution of very-low-level information such as back-of-the-stage reverberant events; and on pop and rock, a de-emphasis of electronic studio effects. The latter was actually a blessing; most of this studio detritus is not supposed to be so obvious in the mix, and isn't with the kind of gear it's usually played through."
