Cables other than MIT with Spectral

I agree with Flex and Detlef. The required use of MIT cable with Spectral only applies to their power amplifiers. However, I believe it is essential that you use Spectral preamplifiers like my DMC-20 with Spectral amplifiers. I too have used other than MIT cables without any detrimental effects with older DMA-50 amps. I recently have been using Virtual Dynamics cables with my Spectral DMA-50 amps and discovered something quite interesting. Prior to using these cables, I had been using MIT 750-plus speaker and MIT 330 interconnect cables. When using these MIT cables, the amps always ran fairly hot. After inserting the Virtual Dynamics Cryoed Audition power, speaker, and interconnects cables, I was surprised to find that the amps now ran cool to slightly warm. Rick Schultz had told me that this would happen, but I honestly didn't believe him until I ran his cables for a couple of days and touched the amps. It is quite remarkable, really, and they sound far better in every respect than the MIT cables I had been using.

Flex and Bob are absolutely correct in this. However the caveat, according to my experience, does not apply to older Spectral gear. I've run their 200s with all sorts of wires, also the 50s without any detrimental effects whatsoever.

Spectral equipment is very wideband & can easily oscillate ultrasonically (you won't hear this) until the outputs fail. Yes they can tell if you've attempted to operate otherwise & will absolutely not warranty this folly. Transparent is another networked design that *should* operate with full stability on Spectral but I wouldn't guarantee anything. Unless you have a quality oscilloscope bridged across a Spectral amp's outputs, or a lot of expendable $ & time, then DON'T.

Adding to Viridian's comment, I believe the same idea also applies to Spectral. That is, they also depend on the inductance of the speaker cables rather than including the inductance within the amp output stage.

I believe Goldmund recommends the same thing. Flex is right on the money. I have owned quite a bit of Golmund gear and Spectral including some Damien and Crosby modified gear a long time ago and was always told to use their cable or MIT. In fact I think MIT produced the cables for Goldmund.

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.

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.

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.

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.