Cables other than MIT with Spectral

At one time Transparent made Spectral-compatible cables. I think there really is something to the business about having to use special cables with Spectral-use of non-approved cables voids their warranty.

I read in a review once that they had good luck using nordost as well. Perhaps this only means that nothing blew up during the review period. It may have been the 1996 stereophile review of the 3d system with the avalon radians.

Thanks for the feedback. What's getting to me is the dealer saying anything other than MIT will "damage" the Spectral. Apparently, this is a subtle form of damage rather than a catastrophic failure. Supposedly, if you use other brands and then send it back to the factory they can tell what you've been doing. Supposedly by detecting this "damage". When I called the factory to see if they agreed with this I was told, "if that's what the dealer says then that's true." This seems very fishy to me.

It isn't fishy, it is standard policy with Spectral and well known by everyone dealing with the company's products. With a few exceptions, Spectral amps are built without internal filtering and require the low pass filtering provided by MIT cables to ensure that very high frequencies are not passed to the amplifier. Such frequencies could cause possibly cause oscillation within the amp. It doesn't mean all non-networked cables would pass very high frequencies to the amp, but Spectral has long adopted the policy of insisting on MIT cables, and may refuse to repair the amps if other cables are used and failure occurs. This requirement applies to the back end of the system, not the front end.