C30 vs AV8

[[email protected]]

Hi - I've been wondering about where the C30 comes in the Arcam heirarchy. In particular - is the C30 better than the AV8 for two channel?

Or can you get no better than AV8/9 and two P1s if you stick with Arcam? Have I come to the end of the Arcam upgrade road?

 

[tvh3ad]

The P1s are definitely the end of the line.

At one point I saw some posting referencing someone at Arcam claiming that the AV9 (or was it the AV8?) was actually better than the C30 and that it was the best preamp Arcam had ever built.

Now I'm not sure if that was really true, and I'm also not sure if it remains true for the C31 vs. AV9, but I *am* pretty sure that if you already have an AV8, any stereo improvement you might get with an AV9 upgrade or move to C31 would be relatively incremental. Don't get me wrong -- I'm sure both pieces would sound slightly different both from the AV8 and from each other, but I'd be somewhat surprised if any of the three was obviously head-and-shoulders better than the others.

That said, you never know 'til you try...

 

[[email protected]]

Many thanks for that. If Arcam say they reckon the AV8 is as good as the C30 for 2 channel then I'll relax and assume I've got the best Arcam stuff I can get.

 

[Jeff]

The C30 is a great pre-amp, I've not compared it directly with an AV8 or 9 though. The multi channel upgrade makes the product very unique.

 

[DOBLY]

What's the difference between the C30 & C31 ??