My two cents and two thousand words on Spectral products. It seems the only press they get (along with the Berkeley Alpha DAC) is Robert Harley, for better or worse. Goodwins audio outside Boston carry both, and I had a thorough audition of the Alpha DAC in 2012 soon after it first came out, but more to the point here, a good taste of the Spectral DMC 30 preamp (driving non-Spectral amps in this case), after auditioning DACs through a very good ’other’ preamp. On the same material, in comparison, the front-to-rear layering of the soundstage, even on studio recordings, was unlike anything I’d heard in hifi before, combined with a near-holographic stereo image. The top octaves, despite modest digital source material (on a $22,000 dCS CD player), were pristine, precise, super-fast, but entirely natural, and actually seemed on the ’darker’ side of neutral. My initial response was certainly amazement, but that didn’t allow for a more-accurate long-term assessment. As my time in the room (after coming to hear DACs) was finishing up, I couldn’t listen to all I would have liked to, but my impressions were beyond other high-end preamps I’m familiar with, or was .
The company seems pretty low-key, archaic website, and design the best product they can, and leave them alone for years. The preamps have the decent control flexibility I like. It seems the wide bandwidth can cut both ways. There’s certainly no musical information in the MHz, but it does make for perfect transients, even if the high frequency noise screws with downstream amps. My own preamp is spec’d -3dB@>0.5MHz vs Spectral’s 1.5MHz, so I don’t know what frequency the issues begin, but I’m sure there’s more to it. This engineer likes their internal layout, design approach, relevant innovations, product cycle longevity, sane pricing, application of RF instrumentation technologies, true research into semiconductor physics and other details that are taken for granted out of necessity by other high-end designers. I would sure like to audition a DMC-30 at home!
A good friend had Alan Goodwin design a ground-up ultimate listening room within the foundation of his cost-no-object new construction, optimized for 2-channel, but also has 5.1. Spectral DMA-360 amps (and preamp) all around (driving large Avalons), and to my current awareness they’ve been on 24/7 for twenty years without issue. Yes, it sounds amazing, but primarily because of a perfect acoustic, perfect absorption and T60 across all frequencies, and perfect bass loading, something never heard in even a well-treated home room turned listening room.
