Why do you never near anything about Spectral

Hmmm..........tubes and turntables are like coming from a cold wintry day into a warm home with the smell of hot cinnamon rolls coming out of the oven! Warm and fuzzy and oozing with icing. Euphonic warmth, if that is what you want great, but not me. Sure the Spectral can be edgy and maybe a little "white", nothing is perfect. But in my system, what you all have is said does not happen, it surely is not thin and the sound images do not float. The images are rock steady. The resolution from bass to high treble is just incredible. And as I said before: the string quartet is in my listening room, right there in a semicircle. And as I said before I have yet to hear a cello as clean and strong as with my current system. Hey it could be the dedicated room with the current tube/bass traps and diffusors, it could be that the room does not have a flat roof but is canted. Listen I am not against tubes, I have had them (or my father who swore by tube amps) longer than before many of you were born, over 50 years, but tubes are not my cup of tea, though I will have the cinnamon rolls!

I spent a lot of time with Spectral's amps driving the Avalons at Overture, complete with MIT cable system etc. The sound was fantastic. I've also had experience with Spectral systems that were less than optimal. My opinion is that because of their high bandwidth and noise senstivity, extreme care must be taken with ancillaries.

There are a great many tube amps on the market that are the antithesis of slow "warm" and euphonic. The Lamm ML2.1's, Joule Electra amps(Grand Marquis), Tenor and my own Atmasphere MA2 Mk2.3's are prime examples that are extremely resolved, detailed and dynamic. You are painting with _way_ too broad a brush when referring to "Tube Amps" as "warm and fuzzy and oozing with icing". Sure, I could name some that are, just as I could classify some solid state amps as hard, brittle and dry, but I would never generalize in that way about an entire class of products.

What's great is that you found the perfect amps-- for you-- and are thrilled with your choice, but that doesn't mean that tube amps are just something 'Grandma' used to like.

I've owned some fantastic SS amps in my day, Edge, Symphonic Line, Essence etc and all were great in their own way. I've simply found the virtues of HC OTL to be be my cup-a the last few years, and never looked back.

My only caveat with Spectral is that once you step outside the Avalon/MIT realm for ancillaries (and careful AC management) it can get complicated to system match them.

Only my experience, mind you.

Grant

I have heard some Spectral systems and have mixed feelings. I once heard the DMA-360's with a Spectral front end playing over Dunalvy 5 speakers at Goodwin's in the Boston area. I was pretty amazed. The resolution and dynamics coming from these amps was extrodinary and significantly better than the DMA180. It was not lifeless...in fact it was very life-like (I think the Dunlavy's had a lot to do with that...much better than the Avalons which were evaluated that day. I can see equating lifeless with Avalon's) Ever since then, I have committed to trying to recapture that level of resolution and presence from my future system iterations.

On the other hand, I heard an all spectral system using the DMA180 amp over Wilson WP-6 speakers. I was totally unimpressed. Very thin, strident, bright..uninvolving and unatural. I don't know if it was the amp, room, or speakers...?

I think it is a stretch to assume that all tubes sound warm, fuzzy euphonic just like it is wrong to assume that all solid state is sterile. In fact, I think the best examples of each are beginning to converge and system combinations must be considered.

For example, I found that my CAT JL-2 tube amp, combined with Viurtual Dynamics cables, comes pretty damn close to the resolution and dynamics I heard from the Spectral 360's but beats the combo I heard in terms of providing a very natural body, timbre and life, without sounding euphonic or fuzzy.

Ultimately, one needs to look at the right combo's. I think the Avalon speaker may not be the best match for the Spectral. However, need to be careful that you consider a more balanced front end when using spectral amps and pre so as to "tune" the sound.

I think an ultimate system would be to utilize a high resolution tube preamp with Spectral 360 amp

When I speak of tubes I speak of transformer coupled tube amps, OTLs are much different beast. I have heard OTLs only twice, the most memorable one somewhere on US 206 or 209 in Northern Jersey an audio store had the NYAL OTL-1s with an NYAL preamp driving a pair of Tangent speakers with VPI turntable playing Coltrane, now that was magic!

I have owned a lot of the gear discussed in this thread, including a Spectral preamp and amp for many years. I loved the stuff. This combination was absolutely clear, timbrally lovely, with great frequency extension, and a dynamic nuance that I've not heard very often from solid state. They were my favorite combination with the Martin-Logan CLSes and Kinergetics subwoofers that I used them with for well over a decade. They were not as well suited for the Wilson WP7s that replaced the ML/Kinergetics combo. After extensive listening at home, in private listening rooms, stores and shows I have found that I respond much more favorably to Wilsons with tubes than without them. This is not an indictment of Spectral by any means! In the right application they can be positively stellar. My cousin has a Spectral based system that he is running with M-L Requests and a REL subwoofer that is truly to die for. I've heard Spectral components sound amazing with Quads, Frieds and Vandersteens, among others. Chalk it all up to personal taste, and the diversity of perspectives that different components provide.