ARC LS25 mkII noise level

Thanks all for your response.

I will call ARC tomorrow. I did a voltage check and everything is good. Although I can read schematics and have some tech skills, I can't figure out where in the circuit this noise might be coming from. If the power filter caps were no good, I would think the noise would be louder and the voltages would be off.

I noticed some strange looking powdery dust covering the main board. I wiped away what I could. No change in noise.

Powdery dust? Did you check the RCA's for green leafy substance? Sounds like a smugglers preamp.

Please post what ARC recommends.

Resolution:

After doing a through noise measurement and consulting with a very qualified tech here in NYC and the head tech at ARC, my LS25 II is indeed within spec. It comes down to my expectation and the fact that the Focal 1027 be's are very sensitive. Although Focal publishes them to be at 91db, it is very conservative. It is more close to 95db or so.

ARC uses as a reference, a pair of 87db speakers. It is quite interesting to me that a low cost Arcam solid state preamp is dead silent. The sound quality is much inferior, however. So like life, compromise is a part of audio as well.

The good news is that there is a simple mod to reduce the gain on the LS25mkii by 6db. My tech is quite sure this will do the trick. So all is well!