I had the opportunity of hosting fellow member and friend Mobiusman over the past two days as he was in town for his daughter's graduation from Stanford Business School. Yesterday we took off for Berkeley to visit Music Lover's for an audition of the new gear and I must admit we were simply amazed at the sound of this system. Jae (the owner) who I know, was nice enough to set the gear up in his large SOTA listening room played through a pair of Wilson Sasha speakers. For those who either don't know, aren't familiar with or just don't like the sound of Spectral with Wilson, I say you owe yourself another audition. Jae was quick to point out that this new gear arrived but a few days earlier and was being broken in and said not to expect too much. Boy was he mistaken. The soundstage was staggering. In fact I had to listen many times to believe what I was hearing. I just was amazed at the height depth and width of the soundstage.
We were played a compilation of some of Jae's favorite music and honestly some 2 hours later we felt we had to leave for fear of overstaying our welcome as the sound was just that good. Several months ago Jae had played the DMA-260's and it was equally impressive however the combination of all 3 pieces of Spectral gear added so much more to the overall sound. Although far from inexpensive, this system by today's standards was not too terribly bad and it rocked the room. Even though not fully broken in the components were amazing to my ears. The CD player is only Redbook but IIRC does upsample to 24/192. We were told that Spectral is working on separate components for a CD transport as well aas a separate DAC. There was also no input on the back of the player for purposes of using the DAC only for a computer based server. We were told that this was one reason for the planned separate DAC
From what I understand the preamp has MSRP of $12K
amps have MSRP of $20K
CD player has MSRP of $20K
Sashas have MSRP of $28K
IMO this is one system that would provide for years of enjoyment
We were played a compilation of some of Jae's favorite music and honestly some 2 hours later we felt we had to leave for fear of overstaying our welcome as the sound was just that good. Several months ago Jae had played the DMA-260's and it was equally impressive however the combination of all 3 pieces of Spectral gear added so much more to the overall sound. Although far from inexpensive, this system by today's standards was not too terribly bad and it rocked the room. Even though not fully broken in the components were amazing to my ears. The CD player is only Redbook but IIRC does upsample to 24/192. We were told that Spectral is working on separate components for a CD transport as well aas a separate DAC. There was also no input on the back of the player for purposes of using the DAC only for a computer based server. We were told that this was one reason for the planned separate DAC
From what I understand the preamp has MSRP of $12K
amps have MSRP of $20K
CD player has MSRP of $20K
Sashas have MSRP of $28K
IMO this is one system that would provide for years of enjoyment