A disclaimer: I never did a home evaluation of the Series 1, because its significantly reduced gain (and consequently dynamics) - now apparently restored - left me cold. But much of the below may well apply to it as well... mullard88 and others would know best.
So, I've been evaluating the Series 2 at home, and when paired with the 360 Series 2's, I would call this the end of smearing. This is really an accolade to all solid state and tube pro equipment used in the best of recordings, and an expression of frustration that it took so long for Spectral (and perhaps other top shelf manufacturers) to reach this point. Perhaps it's much easier to capture and record than reproduce... But all of the tubed Pope Music, Chesky et al as well as solid state RR HDCD recordings are, at this point, as crystal clear and crisply rendered as I care them to be.
The differences against my preamp are stark:
I've never experienced such relaxed listening at home because I can't yet find any flaws and everything sounds so natural, with great recordings. There is just one area of concern - a little exaggerated sibilance with some recordings, and I don't know yet if it's them or the preamp. But my preamp is up for sale on a'gon.
In the preamp's bulletin on the website it is mentioned that the new design enabled the engineers to remove some "stabilizing" capacitors and roughly double the bandwidth of the SHHA modules. Whatever the trick was, it worked. (Spectral - the manual itself should really be re-written; decade-old language, it feels).
Finally, all of the above observations are also testament to the quality of the Berkeley Alpha DAC and the Ortofon A90 - two apparently extremely fast and accurate sources.
The eval is on-going...
So, I've been evaluating the Series 2 at home, and when paired with the 360 Series 2's, I would call this the end of smearing. This is really an accolade to all solid state and tube pro equipment used in the best of recordings, and an expression of frustration that it took so long for Spectral (and perhaps other top shelf manufacturers) to reach this point. Perhaps it's much easier to capture and record than reproduce... But all of the tubed Pope Music, Chesky et al as well as solid state RR HDCD recordings are, at this point, as crystal clear and crisply rendered as I care them to be.
The differences against my preamp are stark:
- Much more treble energy - the old adage that if a manufacturer can't get the treble right he or she will attenuate it applies up until the Series 2's arrival in my home. They seem to have gotten it right; I can now hear again tape hiss in some recordings (e.g. Sheffield o-Daiko drums - BTW, rendering of this piece is so realistic as to be truly frightening) - and I thought my ears had given out
- The dynamic range is much more realistic; I would roughly estimate a 3dB increased headroom
- The amount of low-level information retrieval is staggering; I can't believe I am hearing new details for the first time
- The 3D positioning and layering within the soundstage is phenomenal
- I imagine at the bottom of all this is probably its ability to "perfectly" follow the signal - you just know when something sounds exactly right = truth of timbre and "living presence"
I've never experienced such relaxed listening at home because I can't yet find any flaws and everything sounds so natural, with great recordings. There is just one area of concern - a little exaggerated sibilance with some recordings, and I don't know yet if it's them or the preamp. But my preamp is up for sale on a'gon.
In the preamp's bulletin on the website it is mentioned that the new design enabled the engineers to remove some "stabilizing" capacitors and roughly double the bandwidth of the SHHA modules. Whatever the trick was, it worked. (Spectral - the manual itself should really be re-written; decade-old language, it feels).
Finally, all of the above observations are also testament to the quality of the Berkeley Alpha DAC and the Ortofon A90 - two apparently extremely fast and accurate sources.
The eval is on-going...
