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Review: Spectron Musician III Signature Edition Amplifier

Category: Amplifiers

This review is of the newly released Spectron Musician III "Signature Edition" MSRP $5995. The signature edition has improvements over the $4995 standard version (which is an exceptional amplifier as-is) that improve the specs and sound to the degree of making it a strong competitor to $20K-40K reference monoblocks. John Ulrick (former co-founder of Infinity and creator of the first digital amp in 1974) has really outdone himself with this new design. The Musician III Signature version is one of the most natural, detailed, robust and transparent amplifiers I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. The soundstage is so vast that when I closed my eyes, my once constricted sounding listening room sounded like someone snuck into my new home and added an extra room behind the speakers! Ok, I may be exaggerating about the stage a little bit but not about the clarity, detail and bass authority. This amp is POWERFUL and difficult loads do not even phase it. I have MBL 111E Omnidirectional speakers connected to it. I originally focused my attention on the ship anchor sized MBL 9011 monoblocks and fell in love with them at CES 2005. The Spectron was purchased to be a temporary place holder until I could afford the MBL giants. After purchasing this tiny, less than 60 lb. digital powerhouse, I have no desire to shell out for Monoblocks that cost as much as my new BMW 5. Everyone recognizes that the new digital designs are powerful and efficient but there exists an industry wide stigma about the musicality of most digital designs. Many inexpensively or poorly implemented digital chip based designs simply do not have the warmth and natural sound of the finest tube and class A solid state amps. The Spectron Musician III Signature is in a category all by itself. I enjoy listening to cello and piano. I ran through about 2 hours of "The Essential Yo Yo Ma" and was shocked. The Spectron revealed nuances and micro details that I never noticed previously on tracks that I listen to frequently. The bass is robust, strong and very controlled. The Spectron sounds nothing like many of the digital ice-power or tripath based designs. The Spectron is very transparent. What comes out of it is exactly what you put into it. Use a great power cord and exceptional source equipment and you cannot lose with this amp. Other Spectron owners tell me that tube preamps such as BAT are a perfect companion for the Spectron. If you are considering purchasing a new amplifier in the $10000+ category, you owe it to yourself, and your wallet, to give the Musician III Signature a listen. Be sure to have a pair of well respected tube or solid state amps that cost at least twice as much in the same room for A/B comparison. You will be amazed! The manufacturer burns in the amps for a week or so at the factory and informed me that I need to give it at least a week of burn-in at home to fully appreciate it. After a few hours of warm up, right out of the box, it sounded great. I am on day 4 of listening and it just keeps getting better.

Strengths: Powerful, Open Soundstage, Critical Midrange is natural and dynamic. Nice build quality. Pretty Face

Weakness: No rack mount option at this time.

Associated gear
Theta CBIII w/Extreme DACS running 2ch
Underwood Modded Denon 3910
MBL 111E Omnidirectional Speakers
PS Audio Duet
Mr.Cable Musician Power Cord

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simontju
257 posts
 
Hello Zaikesman,

"strikes me as making things sound as though there should be a bigger advantage to balanced output drive than it seems there probably really is, considering how only a minority of amps widely considered to be top-class employ the configuration."

Actually very many amplifier manufacturers use balanced output configuration. Probably all class D amplifiers use it, for example. You simply do not hear about it because its very simple design and nothing "to advertise"

This sub-discussion started then Guido announced that his favorite (and truly excellent) class D amplifier has fully balanced design and then its ended when he acknowledged that it has single amplification module.

The topic by itself is very interesting. Guido was right raising this question.
guidocorona
4,114 posts
 
Thank you Simontju. like the Rowland 312, It now appears that the Spectron Musician 3 may sport a balanced output as well. I will post here as I find out more details.
zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
Simontju wrote:

"Actually very many amplifier manufacturers use balanced output configuration. Probably all class D amplifiers use it, for example."
I'm sure you know more about it than me, but nothing you say appears to me to contradict my statement. I don't know about so-called Class D amps, but among conventional power amps, as far as I know more products don't use balanced output stages than do (even if they might have balanced drive and/or gain stages). Hence my use of the word "minority", which doesn't necessarily mean very few. Obviously, some companies do make a point of advertising their fully-balanced configuration (BAT, Krell, Atma-Sphere, etc.). Others (like Conrad-Johnson and Lamm for example), although they may not advertise it as such, eschew balanced circuits as a matter of design principle because they feel balanced operation detracts from realistic sound by way of cancelled even-order harmonics more than it contributes in the form of reduced total distortion and noise (this last being more of a factor at line-level anyhow, as opposed to speaker-level power output). Most of the rest presumably don't use it because of the extra cost in having doubled circuits, with power output stages generally being the most expensive (Class D amps, whose output stages might be in the form of IC's, could be exceptions).
simontju
257 posts
 


Dear Guido,
Yes, of course, Spectron has balanced output - its truly, not big deal.

Dear Zaikesman.

class D power module if anything its not IC chip and if they would be inexpensive then most if not all class D manufacturers would use them in FULLY balanced amplifier. It takes thousands and thousands of man-hours to design proper class D module. In the United States there are only three design studios (Spectron, Nu Force and that of Bruno Putzey)

I see that first of all we need to define word "balanced" - OK, balanced design of anything mean that there are two (2) signal paths in this "something" where all electrical characteristics are as identical as technically possible - with one exception only - they MUST be in oppose phase to each other.

For example, with flip of the switch on the back of Spectron you convert this stereo amplifier into FULLY (i.e. from amp input to binding posts of the speakers) balanced design with may be (nobody measured) 2400 wpc @ 8 ohms. You double slew rate, you double bandwidth, you have this and you have that. Simply the amp is so good that as far as I know nobody ever tried to use two of them in balanced monoblocks form.

The same is probably true (I suspect, I really don't know) with Jeff Rowland and other responsible and talented manufacturers in United States and Europe.
May be one day, I will write small "primer" on true advantages of fully balanced design, at least as can be implemented by end user in Spectron amps and post it on Discussion Form.

All The Best to both of you!
guidocorona
4,114 posts
 
Hi Simon, it was indeed fab talking with you today. Per our discussion, the fully balanced design of such devices as Spectron Musician 3 Signature and JRDG may contribute significantly to their ability of controlling difficult loads by doubling the slue rate without resorting to extravagantly high output currents. Furthermore, you also suggested that the Spectron fully balanced output in the mono configuration of the amp may also yield twice the bandwidth. If I understood correctly, The dedicated speaker wires of the Spectron Musician take furter advantage of the balanced output design by containing three conductors: positive, negative, and ground yielding superior control of speakers with difficult loads.

On a more philosophical note, you probably belong to the more objectivist school, while as you know, I am part-time subjectivist. In the end, you you may likely say that something sounds correct and real but is also sounding beautiful. . . while I may vehemently argue that it fact it sounds beautiful but it is also sounding congruent with correctness and reality. In the end. . . we are clearly both after MUSIC! Saluti, Guido
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