Spectron MIII mk II owner's question.

Hello Andr.

I will try to answer your question. You need to speak with Simon Thacher, one of Spectron designers (chief is John Ulrick) who is responsible for voicing. He is former concert pianist and he will tell you that he voice equipment mostly using correcrtly recorded piano music. He (and John, of course) try to reach total realism. He does not know how voice of this or that singer sound in real life so he believe he should not voice his unit using as a standard something he does not know 100%.

In many Spectrons ads you will see Simon's slogan "life-like" That means that people who attend acoustic musical concerts will like then most this amp. Best evidence is that many respectable speakers designers like Albert von Schweikert, Anthony Gallo, late John Danlavy etc use (or used) Spectron for the development of their speakers. Professional recording engineers and professional musician love this amplifier for its "life-like" representation, including distortion-free creshendos.

I listen few times Joule-Electra VZN-300 (driven by Spectron power cords which bring bass to another level) along with MBL-101E. Despite its low sensitivity of 82 dB, MBL is characterized by uniform impedance. What this $100k combo gave me was "magic" - words like "lush and warm" will not do justice but probably closest to that I experienced. I don;t know if after three months of tjhis listening I would be still "on the heaven" or saturated with "better then life" sound and run away.

One advantage of Spectron, and for sure it is - its so good "platform" that you can add good front end, better speakers, new interconnects etc and be much less concern about synergy - Spectron will make its work of amplification without addition or subtraction or new emphasis (I do not deny phenomenon of synergy - just here its more "safe").

Andr,

To add to a specific advantage of the Spectron for me is its quickness and its ability to process an extremely complex signal.

I was told that the biggest reason some people don't think the Wadia CD players are as good as they are, is that the preamp or amp receiving the signal isn't fast enough to handle it.

I've found that to be true for myself. The Karan and Burmester amps that I had were good, but with the Spectron and Pass amps, the music was much more enjoyable and lifelike.

Until I heard this for myself, I couldn't picture this logically happening in my mind. But it makes sense if you've ever heard Silent Source cables, which were the first ones that I found like this.

The ability of an amp, cable or any component to be fast enough to accurately pass the audio signal makes it have a more accurate attack and greater dynamic swings, especially when they have a really quiet background.

Chuck

Any of you have problems with buzz/hum from your Spectrons?

Madfloyd,

I had a slight hum coming out of the left channel. I sent it to Spectron and they repaired whatever it was (I didn't ask) for free.

Chuck

When I was searching for my amplifier (mostly among class A ss amps) I found used Spectron then upgraded it then buy another one and ...stopped.

During these last few years I upgardes my speakers from Wilson W/P-8 to Sasha also by Wilson, preamp first to Joule-Electra LA-300 and then LA-450 (yes, its better !) and lastly, with Simon's help Still Point E-SS rack (bloody expensive but WORTH EVERY PENNY AND MORE !!!!!!!!!!!!) as well as a few more smaller things.

I tried a few more power amps (more because of curiocity) and every time concluded that my Spectrons are the best (for me at least) and I can and I do build first class stereo system.

The Spectrons are the basis of my "pyramide" and I am immensely thankful to them not only for their power amps but also for the highly qualified advise I always get from them in matching components etc. I attrubute it to the simplest fact that Simon is former concert pianist and he has professional "ear" and very few designers in the world are TRUE professional musicians (albeit all love music!)

Mike.