Spectron MIII mk II owner's question.

same here.

My B&W802 Diamond need and power and finesse and I have it all in spades!

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).

" what are Spectron's downsides." Only one I can SERIOUSLY think of: its not Joule-Electra OTL with its "magical", "magical" and "magical" presentation. Unfortunatelly, OTL amps cannot drive my B&W802 so its a moot point for me. Also, I don;t like the heat and rather high maintenance of OTL amps.

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").

Hi Simon,

I used your advice and did not changed my TTFT caps to CuTF but invested in something else which could be verty relevant to some other owners and Specron and Joule-Electra. This is Platinum Upgrade of my LA-300ME preamp and while not terribly cheap ($1k) it bring the sound of my system on another much higher level. Everything is more alive, more alive and more alive. Other description is useless I think - yes, muh more detailed, yes much much more three-dimensional, I clase my eyes and my head is dizzy. WOW !!!!!!