The last post on this thread is over two years old. Even still, I would like to post a few comments, though late, because I picked up a Ref 6 about a month or two ago. I traded in my very excellent Ref 5SE, which I thought was untouchable. Before sharing comments, it might be helpful to mention that my rig is all ARC, …. Ref 150 SE amp, Ref CD-8 CD player and PH-8 phone pre. I am driving very underappreciated Paradigm S8 (v3) beryllium tweeter speakers. One last point, the tubes in my CD-8 were stale, so I recently replaced them with new tubes.
Ok, to the meat of it. Ref 6 versus Ref 5SE. The Ref 6 surpasses the Ref 5 in pretty much any way you want to compare.
As far as bass/low-end is concerned, I thought the Ref 6 came with an invisible sub-woofer. My speakers are picking up information I never knew existed in my source material. It is not just bloated bass, but really tight. And btw, I started to de-tweak my rig by removing stuff, like my subwoofer. Don't need it. The Ref 6 passes along all the low-end information in a such a detailed and organized fashion that I do not miss the lowest octave, most of which was sonic bloat anyway.
Moving up the sound spectrum, mids and highs are very airy. The soundstage is very convincing. Another attribute that I notice is that complex music, such as orchestral selections, is much less congested. Oftentimes when listening to familiar source material, I think that I picked up a better recorded version. No! It's the same source material, just presented much better than before.
In short, while I love the Ref 5SE, I think the Ref 6 is a step above. I realize that many laud the Ref 10. I can't even imagine how it compares to the Ref 6. How good can great get??
BIF
