Spectron MIII mk II owner's question.

Dob, you are on a go, keep it going. Can you be more specific ? What does the Joule-Electra do that the Spectron can't ? Soundstage, depth, warmth, in front, laidback, decay,graineness of voices.... ? Lean and dry or lush and rich ? Emphasize the highs, concentrates on midbass and lower ? How does Patricia Barber sound on this thing that is different than the Joule ?

There is so much info available on the sonic signatures of Krell, Conrad Johnson, Levinson, Pass Labs, Rowland, MacIntosh and other big names that it is possible to imagine what they sound just by reading the info.

But Spectron, apart from it's very powerful impact, almost nothing, zip, nada...almost a conspiracy of silence. Does anybody have one that's broken in ?

Andr,

Here's something to think about, maybe there's no conspiracy of silence. Maybe the Spectron is approaching neutrality and therefore doesn't have a noticeable sonic signature that can be easily described.

If that is the case, isn't that what an amplifier is ultimately meant to do? If the amp can simply amplify and pass the signal without altering it, then you can hear what is being extracted from your source.

Personally, I chose the Spectron over my Karan KA I-180, Burmester 036 and Pass XA 30.5 because I liked the neutrality that I perceived as much better.

After having the Spectron for almost a year and a half, I had it upgraded significantly. The upgrade was not to improve its sonic signature, but to clean the power and audio signal even more.

Chuck

Hello Krell man,

Conspiracy of silence is an expression I used to illustrate the lack of comments.

Mmmmmhhhh! I don't know...something is missing. How many times have I read comments here on Agon about definite aspects of the sound signature of a unit by their owners while being on a general evaluation considered as neutral. Even reviewers in hi fi magazines will describe how such and such piece of music sound on a certain unit compared to another and still conclude that both are neutral.

But that's an old debate : what is neutrality !

Hey Terryakan ! You have a Spectron. How do you describe it compared to your previous amp or any other you might have tried in your system ?

Hello Andr.

I will try to answer your question. You need to speak with Simon Thacher, one of Spectron designers (chief is John Ulrick) who is responsible for voicing. He is former concert pianist and he will tell you that he voice equipment mostly using correcrtly recorded piano music. He (and John, of course) try to reach total realism. He does not know how voice of this or that singer sound in real life so he believe he should not voice his unit using as a standard something he does not know 100%.

In many Spectrons ads you will see Simon's slogan "life-like" That means that people who attend acoustic musical concerts will like then most this amp. Best evidence is that many respectable speakers designers like Albert von Schweikert, Anthony Gallo, late John Danlavy etc use (or used) Spectron for the development of their speakers. Professional recording engineers and professional musician love this amplifier for its "life-like" representation, including distortion-free creshendos.

I listen few times Joule-Electra VZN-300 (driven by Spectron power cords which bring bass to another level) along with MBL-101E. Despite its low sensitivity of 82 dB, MBL is characterized by uniform impedance. What this $100k combo gave me was "magic" - words like "lush and warm" will not do justice but probably closest to that I experienced. I don;t know if after three months of tjhis listening I would be still "on the heaven" or saturated with "better then life" sound and run away.

One advantage of Spectron, and for sure it is - its so good "platform" that you can add good front end, better speakers, new interconnects etc and be much less concern about synergy - Spectron will make its work of amplification without addition or subtraction or new emphasis (I do not deny phenomenon of synergy - just here its more "safe").

Andr,

To add to a specific advantage of the Spectron for me is its quickness and its ability to process an extremely complex signal.

I was told that the biggest reason some people don't think the Wadia CD players are as good as they are, is that the preamp or amp receiving the signal isn't fast enough to handle it.

I've found that to be true for myself. The Karan and Burmester amps that I had were good, but with the Spectron and Pass amps, the music was much more enjoyable and lifelike.

Until I heard this for myself, I couldn't picture this logically happening in my mind. But it makes sense if you've ever heard Silent Source cables, which were the first ones that I found like this.

The ability of an amp, cable or any component to be fast enough to accurately pass the audio signal makes it have a more accurate attack and greater dynamic swings, especially when they have a really quiet background.

Chuck