Spectron Musician 3 First Impressions?

iSanchez,

Its true balanced mode and if I recall correctly, rejection of noise and buzz was measured as more then 60 dB (don't hold me to this number!). Plus, amplifier intrinsic distortions, as small as they are now have opposed signs and thus largely canceled.

If you would look on our web site - John Ulrick and I wrote the article (http://spectronaudio.com/tech1.htm) representing my and his philosophy - you start building the amp first by understanding your engineering goals and then by achieving the best specs you can possibly to achieve. Then and only then you can think about "soul" of music and go from engineering into music - if you recall I am also concert pianist by education and it helps me immensely but ONLY after engineeringly we are both happy.

So, in this article, we proposed that amplifier distortion, as pleasant for the ear it could be (e.g. poorly designed tube amplifier produce huge euphonic 2nd order harmonics) - is not only "pleasant" garbage and irritant - to my ears at least (and I am a tube-man!!!) but also is a murky ugly veil between you and music.

Now, you removed largely whatever distortion Musician had and window into music is opened wider - you can hear its sweetness, detail etc of music, blackness between notes etc etc.

That was (part of the) theory and as I understand from you and few other early adoptees of the monoblock approach - it seems to work.

I hope I am right. However, even if I am wrong I am immensely happy with early reports I have.

Best Regards,
Simon

Hi Simon, now I understand. Would a board-level topology redesign let you optimize a model for mono operation instead? I am concerned that the addition of a 'Y" splitter may also cause some degradation because of the additional connector. One more solution is to ask the manufacturer of the ICs from Pre to amp to create a long "Y" split wire that would split just at the connector plugged into the pre. . . no extra connectors that way, but this may add some semi-significant cost to the setup. G.

Dear Guido,

As I wrote above it is my belief that there is no free lunch, still...

I have had interesting discussion, yesterday, with the buyer (D.Y. New York) who was ordering monoblocks and did not want to spent a fortune to pay for the second pair of his very expensive interconnects. Nor did he wanted to use "Y" connector since, in his opinion, additional termination would degrade sound.

We agreed that the optimum solution is for us to make connection between XLR inputs making the monoblock for XLR yet keep RCA inputs disconnected keeping them in stereo mode.

The advantages in this solution is that if he cannot use one amplifier for one or another reason then he always can use the second one in stereo mode.
Secondly, our policy today is that vast majority of repairs (nearly 95%) do not require sending the entire amplifier to us - amp is modular, and most of the user can un-plug modules and ship them to us by air. Another change in policy is that factory repair takes precedence over production - thus we fix it almost same day and ship back by air, and when user receive them, in a few days, he plug them in and end of the story... so disadvantage of having hardwired connections can be felt only for a few days at most.

Finally, I have had, yesterday, additional discussion with production (as you know I am not production engineer) and now, when requested, we can remove this connection without much "danger" to amplifier itself.

I think that our approach to yesterday's D.Y. request is the best illustration of our philosophy to work with each user individually (when needed, of course) until non-superficial solution is reached.

Thank you - I hope I explained our minimalistic approach to this kind of problems.

Simon

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.

"Another change in policy is that factory repair takes precedence over production -"

Hi Simon,
I just had to chirp in and applaud that decision. I've been open to an amplifier upgrade for a little while now, and one class D amplifier just became interesting to me.

Regards