I am at the distinct advantage of having only half of my Spectral purchase and thus cannot compare what I hear at home to what I heard in the store with the 300RS instead of my 260. I can clearly hear elements of what I heard, but not the whole impact. Also I am still breaking in new speaker wire MIT HD90 Rev 2 and probably other things I have not thought about, like the fact that I have moved my speakers to a new location to try to help with the mid bass drop out I had before. This off course means new locations of my JL F-113's which is quite hard with the side firing woofs of the Vivid Giya's.
What would be most helpful to me is any insight and experiences as I progress through the changes that I am hearing, much like what I would expect from breaking in a Shunyata PC, or early MIT break-in. Alternating periods of quite good, if not moments of excellent sound, alternating with merely okay sound. I know that the preamp was broken in 880 hours at Spectral, but to my ears and diagnosis, it is still changing although much less now that i have an additional week on it. I believe it is the preamp and not my HD90's because my subs fluctuate in synch with the Vivid's where the new MIT is connected.
However, having said that, the preamp, as far as I can tell thus far is excellent and definitely not too analytical as I have felt in the past when linked with Spectral amps. There are areas that are already dropping my jaw, but it is not across the entire spectrum as was the case when heard the SV 300 combo. Granted, the Magico S7's may be better than my G3's, although I am not yet ready to make that comment, but I do not have the top to bottom cohesiveness that I heard at Overture. However, I am hearing things that I believe are exceeding what I heard at Overture, like the absolute integration and detail of the bass from the bowels of bass to the lower ranges of the male voice. Strings are also amazing, with resonances that I am not sure I have heard before, as well as percussion that is scary real.
What I can say across the board is greater articulation of each sound with what sounds like faster decay to black, (no thermal tail factor?) I think that I am hearing fairly accurate if not incredibly accurate representation of vocals (like Sinatra and Darren) that I have heard on enough systems that I think I have a fairly accurate reference. Drums and rim shoots are amazingly good (fast decay again?).
Marty and I went to hear the Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie hall on Friday and sat dead center in a second tier box so we had totally unobstructed sound and enough elevation for each section to project directly and indirectly to our seats. While I cannot totally reproduce what we heard (Pictures at an exhibition and La Mer, plus some Strauss waltzes, I can say that I am better able to emulate what I heard better than I have ever heard before on any of my systems.
8 weeks and counting for the 300 RS.
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