In defence of the Arcam/Dirac, you can tailor the sound, indeed the sound of each channel separately, to your own tastes and preferences. On which basis I'd like to say I can't imagine my system sounding any better. But, as it is in fairly constant state of flux, I'd be unwise to do so.
Based around the 860, I'm actually going through a process of simplification, and will stop at the point, or just before the point, I feel I'm losing something. I've currently replaced five of my seven Parasound JC1 monoblocs with a single Parasound A51 ... no problem. Now stripping out six REL 25s and substituting something smaller (you'll know what I mean if you've seen a single REL 25). We'll see, but I'm not too fearful of the outcome.
Basically, and I know it's heresy to say so, but you can go too far. Although it possibly takes going too far to actually recognise it.