Spectron MIII mk II owner's question.

I've had mine for about a year and a half and have no desire to change. I am running it with Audio Research LS 26.

Just for the purpose of added info on this thread, I will add the post of a previous owner of a pair of Spectron monoblocs (on which I've inquired to him at the time).

07-18-10: Radicalsteve
Kiwi,

I owned the Spectrons (monoblocks with bybee and v-caps) with my CLX's. They were very nice with my ML ReQuests, but with the enormous resolving power of the CLX's I found the Spectrons were brittle, lacking in depth and sounding strained. With my dealer we did a side by side comparison with my Plinius SA-250 and frankly is was no contest, the Plinius won hands down, especially in weight, nuance and texture.

We thought that the Spectrons were challenged to deliver current across the impedance curve of the speakers, although the CLX's are not that hard to drive. I used to be a big supporter of Spectrons, and they sound very transparent at first blush, but after a while I realized they lack substance when driving electrostatics or ribbons.

Now my dealer has Bel Canto's with Soundlabs at home (he needs to get the CLX's!) and that combo is very nice - and based on that listening experience I would reank the Bel Canto's ahead of the Spectrons.

In any event, I would not recommend the Spectrons with CLX's, you will either sell the amps or the speakers!

Steve

Hi Andr. I remember story with Radicalsteve. He, at first wrote that it was Apogee Scintilla and much later its changed to M-L CLX. It is obvious that he like Plinius SA-250 more with these speakers and Plinius is excellent , really excellent amplifier. What does it says for me? Nothing. Everybody is different. You like combination of Soundlab with Bel Canto, for example and despite my respect to Bel Canto it (or its B&O mass production ICE modules) does not nearly has reserve (peak) power of Plinius or Spectron or BAT capable to reproduce distortion free musical peaks (creshendos).

I auditioned Soundlab with Pass Lab X350.5 - very powerful amplifier but I would describe the presentation as "pale" and sounded strained. In moment the owner tried it with Spectron high current Thunderbolt power cord everything changed and changed dramatically.

So...different people , different set ups, different results. Still, if you want highly musical amplifier and you have power demending speakers - chances (chances!) are you will be more then happy with Spectron. They sell their amp with 30 days home trial so you can try, judge for yourself and if don't like it - send it back.
Andr - as long as you happy with your amplifier, this is the best amplfiier in the world (at least fro you).

Hello Dob,

I can only agree with you. But I did not supply the info to submit my preferences nor to debate the tastes of anybody here. Please consider my post as information and not as a recommendation from me.

The point is there is not a lot of comments available from people who left Spectron than people who adopt and keep them. I presume that's the kind of info the OP is looking for, two sides of the medal.

If I were to consider Spectron as a future replacement in my system, as a matter of fact I do, I would be interested to know the strongsides and the downsides. The strong aspects have been very well documented, but what about the less positive ones. No single unit is perfect, what are Spectron's downsides. Surely, I would like to know what they are.

The only downside I can think of is they take a long time to break-in, a good 600-1000 hours of playing time. In my experience they can sound downright awful between 150-300 hours. I have a suspicion that any crticisms of Spectron comes from them not being sufficiently broke-in.

In preparation for new speakers I have on order I have upgraded to the mono Spectrons. For what you get in audio playback the Spectrons are a super bargain.

On a side note I would love to hear Mark Levinson's new flagship mono switching amps.