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In Reply to: RE: A reminder for Senile Editors what components they wrote about in the last year... posted by throwback on September 30, 2014 at 07:08:21
Enjoyed it but your way too generous with calling Spectral high end.
Matt at pitchperfect took some on trade and then stated he would not sell it as he would be doing a disservice to his customers. (In keeping with the spirit of your post.)
I own some of the gear you eviscerate and still loved the post.
Follow Ups:
You either had a bad experience, and I've had a few, or you are relying on someone else's opinion, if so, DON'T.
When I hear any potential I try to hear the component(s) at least one more time to give them a fairer chance.
And I'm talking top Spectral, I remember the lesser preamps in the line were...well, "lesser". But the smaller amps sounded great to me, too. Maybe there are certain people who don't like the sound of Spectral, and the gear does have a few quirks despite its' veneer of high-tech snootiness (which I suspect is reason alone for many of the poorer folk to want to piss on it).
I recently heard the DMC-30SS with a DMA-360, and I thought it sounded excellent. Not that Ayre or SimAudio wouldn't match or even slightly edge it out, but EXCELLENT...for a transistor unit.
HUGE qualifier, but then there are losers who don't like tube gear, and that's their problem!
Keith Johnson would be one of them, I suppose...
Anyways, the main problem I had with what I heard is that despite the fact that the 30 & the 360 are touted as latest & greatest (especially by the Prince of Perpetually Suspended Beliefs, Robert Harley), they sound EXACTLY the same as the old DMC-10 & DMA-200 demos I got oh, 25 years ago?
And that's just how good Spectral is, AFAIC. Even 25 years later, and no improvement, and it still more than holds its own. Just that, 25 years ago, it was like from another planet...now it's merely as good as the best of transistors I've heard.
Oh, and I've not heard Soulution, or Halcro, or Technical Brain, or BSlabo. Just SimAudio, Linar, Levinson (worse than ever, and I never liked it), Bryston (HP is stone deaf on this one), Pass (gives the Spectral a run for the money, but I can't honestly call it "better". Similar quality, different sound).and Lux (sounds like my old L-58a, only alot more expensive now. But what isn't? Curiously the most Spectral-like sound of any other gear out there).
The other thing Matt at Pitch Perfect has to pander to is Spectral's insistence that you use only Bruce Brisson's fraudulent MIT cables. I wonder if they are backward-compatible. If I got the cables with the FART control, can I use those on my old DMA-200?
Anyways, Spectral claims that MIT cable is the only cable that is "safe" to use with their stuff; i.e., it's so badly designed on the verge of instability that Kimber or Cardas cable is gonna make it blow up. Solid-State IS far more fussy than tubes for cable compatibility. Even narrow-bandwidth stuff like QUAD's 405 will have a screaming shit-fit if you connect unshielded interconnect to it like Kimber (needs a minimal,critical amount of capacitance). Michael Fremer damaged some DirtZeel junk he was reviewing some time back because he used a non-recommended interconnect and the amplifier went into ultrasonic oscillation. Not exactly great for tweeters or electrostats, btw!
Solid-State designs are bizarre and quite non-linear until substantive amounts of negative feedback are applied. Sure, they'll tell you their amp doesn't have any, and they're full of ship. The heavy feedback is all local these days, not global. Again, not taking the feedback over more than one stage helps twitchy exploding silicon switches better behave themselves, because they fundamentally don't want to!
If you know the sound of MIT cables, and you don't like it (too soft, bloated, fuzzy, rolled off, etc.) then you won't like the sound of Spectral. And without their cable, if the amp blows up, you're warranty is supposedly void. Would you be stupid enough to admit it?
What an "out"! Yes, we make hyper-expensive junk that only works with one cable, and if we think you weren't using it (you probably have to show receipts for, and/or send along your cable as proof when it goes for warranty work?) we'll fuck you over by not honouring our warranty.
Swell! Like their heads!!!!
Well your right Joe, I am relying on someone else's opinion and that is my bad. I did use my past experience in that I believe pretty much all solid state is, well, err, solid state. awww, ok. I heard top line Pass stuff and others and I know I was supposed to like it but it did not do much for me.
I will differ in that the only solid state stuff I heard that I thought was fantastic was that big ass Mark Levinson ML-2 driving big Beveridge speakers. Loved those amps although I could not afford them. I will also defend Dudley as after hearing Shindo gear count me as a fanboy. As for the Altec Valenica's I have never heard them but I prefer a classic JBL over about anything I have come across playing in audio salons (remember those) in the past few decades.
In any event rock on my man.
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