Price Paid:  $3861.00 from factory direct

Summary:
The Musician III Signature is a recent addition to the Spectron line. It is an improvement over the previous Signature III. See their website for details.

It is unfortunate, but this amp is well beneath the audiophile radar screen. Class D digital amps are not yet accepted by a majority of audiophiles, who consider them only worth using in a car stereo or bass amps.

Spend any time with this amp and you will come to a very different conclusion.

As a lover of expensive high quality single ended class A triode tube amps, the mere fact that I can give a 5-star rating to the Spectron suggests that something different is going on with this fine product. .

Strengths:
Take your pick. The treble is simply stated, the best I have ever heard. Talk about air, shimmer, clarity and precision. All the detail you could ever want is there, in space, far removed from the tweeter. It cuts through the air in the same manner as you hear at a live performance. You will not do better in this range with any amp at any price.

The bass is equally outstanding. Deep, powerful, tuneful, with projection that can sock you in the stomach when a mallet hits the bass drum. Not to dry, not to fat, just right. Another area you will be hard pressed to improve upon, regardless of price.

Midrange - ah the midrange. Voices, the critical test for me, are not as lush and warm as I get from my single ended triode amps (and I have owned more than a dozen of the best in the last three years). But guess what ? I have come to the conclusion that the vocal presentation is actually less colored, more accurate than my beloved 300B midrange. I use a cut on a Little Hatch LP that has a voice, harmonica and guitar - recorded to the highest of standards - as a reference. Played back through my wonderful sounding Tron 300B, it can transport you to the studio with the musicians. Simply real, life-like sound. With the Spectron, the LP sounds as good or maybe even better than I have ever heard it in the past.

If you want beautiful colorations, look elsewhere.

The amps also excels in the areas of transparency, speed, dynamics and sound stage. Have I left anything out?

Add it all up and you have a great amp with amazing horsepower that will drive practically any speaker you can think of. I am using it on the power hungry MBLs and it never blinks. A great match at a small fraction of the cost of MBL amps.

Weaknesses:
It takes a long, long time (5-600 hours) to break-in. It is very sensitive to your choice of speaker cables and especially power cords. You can make the amp sound lean and bright or dark and bloated with the wrong cables. This is because, I presume, the amp is so very neutral it lays bare colorations in the cabling you feed it with.

Price: The price is too CHEAP. There is a large market out there who will not consider this amp because of the price - too cheap. It should, if judged by its sound, cost several times as much as it does. In my listening room, it has replaced excellent tube and a solid state amps that cost $25,000 each. Honestly, in most ways it is as good or better than either of them.

Similar Products Used:
Nothing similar. The most powerful amp I have used in years is just 130wpc. But if you need power, I can attest to the fact that the Musician III Signature will keep up sonically with the lower powered ulternatives.