Neutron,
I took a Spirit-1 home with me over the holidays for a buddy to audition in his home. I listened to it for probably 12 hours over the holidays; my buddy several hours more. We were both very impressed with it. The amp will be part of his home office system - it's a small room with solid walls. It's a lively room for sure.
Here are some comments:
His current system: Denon PMA 2000-IV; Rega Saturn CD player; Audio Magic Sorcerer speaker cables and interconnects; Silverline SR17.5 speakers he got from me - I changed out the stock capacitors for Duelund VSF copper; resistors are Mundorf.
Listening to the Spirit was his first experience with tubes.
- Upon listening to the Spirit, he said, "I only thought I knew what texture in music sounded like."
- He also said that the amp made the music so "soulful."
-We had to swap out the Audio Magic. It was too sibilant. We ended up with Kimber 12TC speaker cable and Hero interconnects.
- I had taken some NOS RCA 12AU7 tubes with me, but the stock EH tubes seemed a bit warmer, so we left those in for the moment. I was actually surprised how good the EH's sounded. I think he may end up with an RCA for the signal tube and Mullards for the driver tubes.
- The amp is stone cold silent. There is virtually no hiss coming through the speakers. I turned the volume up all the way and put my ear next to the tweeter. No hiss at all. This amp is very quiet.
- I don't know if it is the Class-A output stage that does it, but this amp is very smooth, detailed and very musical. But then again, his system is very transparent.
- At one point he asked why anyone would not listen to the amp in triode. He liked it that much.
Here's my take though: The Spirit-1 sounds great; it is a very musical amp; it's a serious 30wpc.
We found ourselves playing the system way too loud for such a small room. But it was sooooo clear that we didn't realize how loud it was until one of his daughters came in and asked why we had it so loud.
And the thing is built like a tank too. I would be curious to hear what Ayon considers the improvements given in the Spirit-2, but the Spirit-1 was very nice! But as I mentioned before, I'd pass on the Spirit-3 - I'm just not too keen on autobias.