Spectral SDR-4000S

Too many letters for me. What is the APL NWO-1?

APL NWO-1 is the unit custom made by Alex Peychev at APL hifi.
It starts out life as the Esoteric UX-1 universal player with everything else removed except for the transport . The rest ( master clocks, upsampling, 10 AKM DAC's per channel with 6H30 class A tube outputs.

Interestingly, the Spectral SDR 4000S aslo starts out life with Esoteric Transport( P3) but custom built DAC discrete output stages by Keith Johnson.
Both are incredible sounding machines. I prefer the APL NWO-1 but I do own both units.

Hifirabbit I just purchased a pair of Osiris. They came with MIT EVO 850 wires. What speaker cables are you using on yours? Is Spectral the best choice for these? Have you tried anything else? What about the umbilical cords? can they be removed for upgrade or are we stuck with them? I am a big fan of Stealth cables and would love to have his Dream wires to replace the MIT speaker cables. What are you using for IC's on the Spectral gear? As I recall (10 years ago), when I heard the Osiris at the show in NYC.
It was incredibly fast and detailed with the Spectral gear but not especially musical. How would you describe the sound in your system? I guessed at that time that any lack of liquid flow and musicality was due the to digital front end (also Spectral) that was still in its infancy in 1996.

Bart

hifirabbit
Did you A/B compare the Reimyo to the Spectral? What did you think the differences were and why did you prefer the Spectral? What didn't you like about the Reimyo? Thanks in advance.

The spectral SDR 4000S has wonderful midrange and a pitch dark background separating the vocals / instruments.

The Reimyo has also wonderful midrange. Even though it has a very wide global soundstage, the vocals and instruments just dont separate out as naturally