Spectron Musician 3 First Impressions?


I just installed my Spectron Musician 3 into my system. I had a 2A3 amp powering 96db Epiphany 12/12s. Out of the box, ice cold, the Spectron was incredible! The tonality was spot on with the 2A3 tube amp! The harmonic structure was 85% of the tube amp, and this was with less than 4 hours on the Spectron! The Spectron bettered the 2A3 in 3 major ways: 1.) Increased detail with no loss of sweetness 2.) Deeper bass with more control, 3.) Both micro & macro dynamics! Spectron says it takes 3-4 weeks of 24/7 at medium volume before the amp sounds its best. Has anyone else had a chance to listen to this incredible amp?????

Note: I am not affiliated with Spectron.
darrell

Showing 1 response by romandoc

I also took delivery of a pair of Spectron M3 SE but I haven't had the chance to hook them up in monoblock mode. In fact, I'm just listening to a single amp in stereo mode at the moment. The first thing I noticed when connecting the amp was how quiet it was. Perfectly quiet, absolutely no transformer noise, and only very, very minimal hiss from the tweeters when standing with my ear to within 1ft distance from the tweeter. I have some really "dirty" city electrical power supplied to my home in Cleveland, OH, I've had amps ranging from 20 Wpc (a tube amp) up to 600 Wpc (an older version of Spectron M3 amp) and several in between and always had some kind of transformer noise. Not this time. Likewise, I always had some hiss audible up to 3 ft distance from the tweeters, not bad but still there, again not this time.
Second impression: there was a blackness between instruments, an organic, meat on bones feeling to each audible sound, a precision in extracting the last detail and presenting it in an utterly unforced, natural manner that was very addictive.
I lack the necessary cabling to wire the amps in monoblock mode, but for now I'm happy with what I'm getting as it is.
The rest of the system: von Schweikert VR7 mk2 speakers, the older style one piece model, Audio Logic MXL34 DAC, Benchmark DAC1 USB, Pioneer transport, PC music server, nude resistor volume control, Acoustic Zen and BNC cabling. I listen to jazz, classical (wide variety, from choral to orchestral and everything in between), electronica, down tempo, trip hop.
I will post a formal review of this really awesome amp at some point in the hopefully near future.
As much as I like my other components, I have to admit that the Spectrons are in a different league sonically and I warmly recommend them to anyone in the market for a mid to high power amp, regardless of topology. Be sure to ask about the v-cap option (the so called "signature Edition Plus"), highly recommended.