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Review: Spectron Musician III Signature Edition Amplifier

Category: Amplifiers

This review is of the newly released Spectron Musician III "Signature Edition" MSRP $5995. The signature edition has improvements over the $4995 standard version (which is an exceptional amplifier as-is) that improve the specs and sound to the degree of making it a strong competitor to $20K-40K reference monoblocks. John Ulrick (former co-founder of Infinity and creator of the first digital amp in 1974) has really outdone himself with this new design. The Musician III Signature version is one of the most natural, detailed, robust and transparent amplifiers I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. The soundstage is so vast that when I closed my eyes, my once constricted sounding listening room sounded like someone snuck into my new home and added an extra room behind the speakers! Ok, I may be exaggerating about the stage a little bit but not about the clarity, detail and bass authority. This amp is POWERFUL and difficult loads do not even phase it. I have MBL 111E Omnidirectional speakers connected to it. I originally focused my attention on the ship anchor sized MBL 9011 monoblocks and fell in love with them at CES 2005. The Spectron was purchased to be a temporary place holder until I could afford the MBL giants. After purchasing this tiny, less than 60 lb. digital powerhouse, I have no desire to shell out for Monoblocks that cost as much as my new BMW 5. Everyone recognizes that the new digital designs are powerful and efficient but there exists an industry wide stigma about the musicality of most digital designs. Many inexpensively or poorly implemented digital chip based designs simply do not have the warmth and natural sound of the finest tube and class A solid state amps. The Spectron Musician III Signature is in a category all by itself. I enjoy listening to cello and piano. I ran through about 2 hours of "The Essential Yo Yo Ma" and was shocked. The Spectron revealed nuances and micro details that I never noticed previously on tracks that I listen to frequently. The bass is robust, strong and very controlled. The Spectron sounds nothing like many of the digital ice-power or tripath based designs. The Spectron is very transparent. What comes out of it is exactly what you put into it. Use a great power cord and exceptional source equipment and you cannot lose with this amp. Other Spectron owners tell me that tube preamps such as BAT are a perfect companion for the Spectron. If you are considering purchasing a new amplifier in the $10000+ category, you owe it to yourself, and your wallet, to give the Musician III Signature a listen. Be sure to have a pair of well respected tube or solid state amps that cost at least twice as much in the same room for A/B comparison. You will be amazed! The manufacturer burns in the amps for a week or so at the factory and informed me that I need to give it at least a week of burn-in at home to fully appreciate it. After a few hours of warm up, right out of the box, it sounded great. I am on day 4 of listening and it just keeps getting better.

Strengths: Powerful, Open Soundstage, Critical Midrange is natural and dynamic. Nice build quality. Pretty Face

Weakness: No rack mount option at this time.

Associated gear
Theta CBIII w/Extreme DACS running 2ch
Underwood Modded Denon 3910
MBL 111E Omnidirectional Speakers
PS Audio Duet
Mr.Cable Musician Power Cord

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simontju
257 posts
 
P

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Positives of Balanced Design
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Hello Guido and Hello Sodapop. I think it would be unfair for me to ignore some positive aspects of balanced approach.

When you use balanced approach in preamp you reject common noise and hum coming to you from upstream. Obviously, its very useful.

When you use balanced output of your preamp and TRUE (!!!) balanced input of your power amp, to quote Victor Khomenco from BAT - you "respect signal integrity"

For example, in Spectron where its true balanced input, it takes both phases, summated them into double signal if you wish, reject additional noise and hum which could originate on the interconnect and thus its useful, particularly in professional applications where long interconnects with non-zero reactive and resistive impedance is used.

After that, inside power amp? I already stated so - exception is again very, very noisy and distorted signals - tube circuits, I feel, could be main beneficiary.
All The Best.
guidocorona
4,298 posts
 
Thank you Simon, I won't even venture to guess which amp would be more of my liking--JRDG 312 or Spectron Musician Sig--as I have not even heard the latter at all, and I would need to a/b the two to form an even half educated opinion, regardless of underlying technology. On the other hand, as Jeff Rowland does not even bother to advertize his balanced design of the 312's output stage on his company's literature, I am comfortable suggesting that whatever his reasons were in selecting such a design, trite 'marketing gimmick' is unlikely to be one of them. Furthermore, as far as I know, the 312 employs only 1 ICE module rather than 2 as you instead venture to guess, or in other words, the power conversion section may be the only section of the amp which is not balanced.
zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
Steve McCormack claims there's a speaker-control advantage to using balanced-differential output drive that can aid in achieving superior resolution and transparency. How supportable that view is, or why, I'm not qualified to say, other than to report that the fineness and depth of detail (timbral, spatial and dynamic) I hear from the fully-balanced DNA-500 won't contradict his contention.
guidocorona
4,298 posts
 
Zaikesman, that is exactly what Rowland contends: If I remember correctly my conversation with him, Jeff suggests  that by driving actively the 2nd conductor on the speaker wire, he can control tightly the return excursion of the speaker drivers, rather than letting them rely on their elastic return. This according to him, is expected to yield better resolution and control at all frequencies, while reducing the need for extraordinarily high currents for driving difficult loads. Apparently he has started this type of design on the models 8 and 9 amps and maintained it on the new class D line. The 7M was the last JRDG design to be single ended in the output phase.
zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
That bit about balanced drive constituting an "active" control over the entire driver excursion and single-ended drive depending upon elastic or "passive" driver "return" seems to correspond with McCormack's description of "push-pull" operation of the drivers. Whether that explanation is actually the case I have no idea, but it strikes me as making things sound as though there should be a bigger advantage to balanced output drive than it seems there probably really is, considering how only a minority of amps widely considered to be top-class employ the configuration.
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