Spectron Mk II, is it really that good.



I have been researching several of the new “green”, compact high power class “D” amps. It seems that the new version of the Spectron Musician III SE Mk II, is pretty much considered the king of the hill. Having no dealers near buy, I can’t actually listen before buying. My question is, there seem to be lots of happy owners, but are there any current, or former owners who are, were, not happy with the amp, or is it really that good.

FYI: Current amp is a PASS, X-350.5. A monster to move around, hot, cost a fair amount to run, but a wonderful sound.

All comments and opinions welcome.
bwhaler
Perhaps it is system or speaker dependent or the sound you are looking for but I like my MK2 with V-Cap upgrade (makes it more liquid sounding). The sound is very musical sort of between tubes and SS but with tremedous headroom and tigh solid bass.

I have B&W 803D speakrs that can dip to 2-3 ohms and the Spectron is stable down to 0.1 ohms which really helps....especially if one has electrostatic speakers.

I tried a lot of amps before settling on the Spectron (I like the MK with V-Cap upgrade more) as it works well with my speakers and system. I use a tube preamp and the combination works well for me.

What I didn't use to like were the round black speaker posts that were not suitable for bi-wiring. However they now use a Cardas regular speaker post and it is a welcome change.

I originally purchased a single Musician III SE. I later added a second amp for mono-block operation. As good as a single amp can be, these amps in mono-blocks are in a whole new level. It is often the case that bridging amps does not return double the improvements, or the investment. With the Spectron mono-blocks the performance improvement are quite dramatic.

I recently upgraded the mono-blocks to MK2 status, along with Bybee purifiers upgrades. In my mind, this was a minor upgrade, but I was blown away by how much quieter these amps were after the upgrade. There is more speed, control and finesse. I was told that about 70% of the improvement I'm hearing is due to the Bybee purifiers.

I don't know what the MK2 without the Bybee purifiers sound like, but with them installed I very, very highly recommend these mono-blocks.

Best,

iSanchez

Mdrummer01, My mistake, I was refering to the Musician II. I know they have made a lot of progress with updated versions from what I have heard. My experience with the Musician II and model 10 pre were cumbersome to say the least. After switching to BAT gear, I would never go back to class "D" IMHO, The sound was somewhat colorized .....
I have the MKII with both V-Cap and Bybee upgrades (I highly recommend both) and really love this amp. I found that the break-in time is lengthy but well worth the wait on the other end.
I owned the Spectron Musician III Signature Edition which replaced a Spectral DMA-150 Series II. Whilst I was initially happy, I found that with long term use for several hours a day I came to recognize a distortion which I can only describe as bleached or whiteish high frequencies. Once I had become cognizant of that, I found it extremely annoying, almost to the point of being unlistenable. To mitigate the problem I replaced the Spectron with the far more expensive MBL 9008A monoblocks which are in a totally different league. I was so pleased I posted a message to a forum stating the facts. To my chagrin, I got an extremely rude email from Spectron effectively telling me that I was stupid and I should have forked over $$$ for their monoblocks and associated upgrades. Needless to say I was not amused. I'm glad I got off the Spectron upgrade merry go round at the earliest opportunity. I won't be going back.