Spectron Musician III MK.2 or Audio Research DS450

I haven't heard the Spectron, but loved the ds450 stereo, on many speakers. Great control for those that need it, loads of current. Takes a long time to break in... Do not judge it new out of the box.
Been told by industry folks that using it with magnepans was the first time they got good bass out of those speakers-- for what that's worth.
For me, I'd go the old school route and use it with a tube preamp, ie arc ls27. Then it gives you everything you could want.
A great product, just use it correctly.

>>11-11-11: Orpheus10
Score one for the morons, none for the genius.<<

Correction:

Score one for the geniuses, none for the moron.

Hope that helps.

Hi this is in response to Magfan, first like you i love Maggies & all full range panels, my dislike of class D amplification was due to the FACT that i had not heard any that i liked until a few weeks ago, a friend invited me to listend to an amp that he had built, it was an Hypex N core NC-400 & SMPS-600,this one realy sounded good and i have the intention of having a pair of mono blocks built, that's how much i liked it, i'm no fool when it sounds good it sounds good no matter what the Class - tubes or solid state.

Well why am I not surprised ? Everything you despized a short while ago are beginning to fall within your tastes. All it took is the proper guru. This goes for subwoofers and very shortly servers.

The core problem with many Class D amps on the market such as Bel Canto, Nuforce, Red Dragon, Hypex, CIA, Wyred4Sound
and other light weight, cool running switching designs is that they are wall dependent, needing to rely on dedicated 15 or 20 amp a.c. lines since they lack large power supplies from a large bank of capacitors found in A and A/B
amps which sound better for that reason. This was the problem with the Carver Magnetic Field Amplifier back in the 80's, which was also wall dependent, which was nothing more than a glorified modified block transformer. Rowland and Levinson use switching devices but those amps run very hot. As far as a true Class D design, Spectron, Digital Amplifier Company and their Cherry amps and Audio Research, currently have the largest power supplies on the market for class D amps. But the Audio Reseach DS450M is by far the current KING of all class D amps worldwide. Why? It is the first class D amp that is a complete analog design, taking a true A/B amp with an integrated switching device. Their switching device is a in-house design they have a patent on. The DS450M has the largest power supply in the world out of any class D amp, much larger than Spectron or DAC'S Cherry amps. The main power supply of the DS450M has 260,000 microfarads of power from the main capacitor banks, and if you included the power supply from the secondary caps and the transformer, runs over 300,000 microfarads. If you want the best musical performance from a class D amp as the DS450M, don't waste your time on the 12 to 18 pound class D amps that will never provide the large current reserves since they lack large capacitor banks which is critically necessary to get the best performance from a full range speaker. The DS450M will drive 1 ohm loads without breaking a sweat and runs cool.