Vecteur I-6.2 Integrated ?


I currently own B&W N-803s and a Rega Planet 2000 player. I started testing a bunch of integrateds to drive the N803s.
My listening room is 13' x 17' x 8.5' (Rear wall has a 9' X 7.5' opening, right wall has a 4 x 7.5' opening, left wall has 2 3' x 5' windows heavily drpaed). I prefer listening to jazz, classical and rock at mostly low volumes. My room has a few acoustic treatments - drapes over 2 windows, wall to wall carpet, a couple of tube traps etc. I like a well - defined soundstage with reasonable width and depth and good precision of image (well who doesn't :-)), reasonable bass slam (prefer finesse over muscle) and linearity (little or no compression) even at low volume (under 9 'o' clock).
I demo'd the following integrateds and I found that in my room with my setup (no offense to anyone else that may own these fine integrateds):
1. NAD C370 maintained good tonality, but produced a flattened soundstage and sounded compressed at low volume, reasonable midrange but not good detail in bass and highs.
2. Bryston B-60 - very harsh sounding on trumpets etc., reasonable soundstage, compression at low volume , reasonable detail.
3. Mac 6500 - somewhat warm, but didn't quite like the sound.
4. MF A3.2 - lean sounding, slightly bright, not enough bass.
5. MF A308 - sounded robust, good bass slam but bass was not clearly delineated and highs rolled off. Good soundstage otherwise.
So I come to my question finally:
Have any of you listened to the Vecteur 6.2 ? A friend of mine pointed me to it, unfortunately I have no way to demo it (friend lives in California and I am in New England). I spoke to Mutine (the distributor) in Montreal and Pascal was more than kind to explain a lot of things to me and I must admit the Vecteur sounds good (on paper... atleast). Other than a single (exceptional) review by Neil Walker, I haven't seen anything else on this amp. Do you have any other suggestions ? If a bunch of you think the Vecteur is worthy, I may drive up to Montreal (speakers and player in tag) to demo the amp. Mutine unfortunately does not have a return policy and no dealers in New England. The B&Ws are somewhat tough to drive, even if they are 90db sensitivity, 8Ohms nominal impedance, they dip down to 3 Ohms and from what I've seen they prefer a high current amp with atleast 125-150 wpc into 8 ohms, both channels driven... My budget is ~$3k and I prefer to buy a new amp. If I have left out any relevant details let me know. I appreciate your input.
playhard

Showing 2 responses by loudandclear

Playhard,

Thanks for letting us know where you ended up.
I am much in the same position as you were.

Did you every audition the I-6.2 and how would you compare it to the Prelude Reference Mk11?

Thanks!
Playhard,

Thnaks very much for the informative post. Yes, Vecteur amps are really something special.

The Vecteur I-4 we recently had in our systems bested the following list of well reviewed gear:
BelCanto Evo2i GenII
DK Designs VS-1 Reference MKII
PS Audio HCA-2 / PCA-2 combo
Cayin 265ai
Pathos New Classic One
Unison Research Unico
Panasonic XR25 & XR-45
JVC RX-ES1
Bryston 3BSST & PCA-2 / TVC Passive
Simaudio I-5
Blue Circle BC28 & PCA-2 / TVC Passive

Really shocked us for sure. Musicality is spades!

The Audiomat Arpege was beyond steller as well and bested the I-4 in one system (with B&W Sig805's) but did not have the drive for the other system (88db 4-ohm floor standers & large room). The Prelude must truly be something special & we can not wait to hear it.

thanks again.