Musical Fidelity

[struth]

Had a m1dac which is a nice bit of kit for relatively little money. Best was the a1000. A stonker and the best thing they ever made. Rare to find here as most were sold in usa. A build quility you wont find now

[southall-1998]

Had a m1dac which is a nice bit of kit for relatively little money. Best was the a1000. A stonker and the best thing they ever made. Rare to find here as most were sold in usa. A build quility you wont find now

Gosh, she looks stunning!

S.

[Haselsh1]

I used to own an A100-X amplifier which was connected to Rogers single wired LS3/5a's and the combination was one of the best I have ever owned. The stereo effect was bloody massive especially on the first release of 'Amused to Death'. Loved that amp and those loudspeakers.

[struth]

Had a m1dac which is a nice bit of kit for relatively little money. Best was the a1000. A stonker and the best thing they ever made. Rare to find here as most were sold in usa. A build quility you wont find now

found a couple of pics for the uninitiated

[Arkless Electronics]

I actually started a similar thread some time back in "the other place" after also thinking that for a major UK brand they get very little mention on the forums.
As some will know I once worked for them, and my own view at the time (about 1991) was that in circuit design and sound quality they had the competition beat but that the most cynical of cost cutting led to poor reliability in certain products. It was basically a case of they'd decide to put out an amp for say £299.99 and when it became clear that bigger heatsinks and higher rated components were necessary to ensure reliability, they wouldn't spend the extra money that would have made the MF product £40 more than the rival Mission, QED, Creek or whatever.
The worst case I can recall was the Michaelson Audio Odysseus valve integrated amp. It sounded fantastic (A TdP design) and was very competitively priced but every one they built failed within a couple of months! I had sent a memo to A.M telling him that certain parts needed uprating or it would likely be unreliable, but the message came back that no way was it to be uprated.... all for the sake of maybe an extra £30 on the B.O.M for an amp selling at about £1200 at the time...

[Arkless Electronics]

Models I would recommend as being fairly reliable and sounding good would be P140, P150, B200 (all very similar. The B200 being the integrated amp but with the same power amp section), P270 and A370 (again very similar to the "budget" models above but with vastly bigger power supplies, true dual mono but in one box and many more output devices in parallel).
Avoid? MA50's and MA100's (monoblock power amps) are very unreliable and the A1 not that much better... I have rebuilt quite a number of A1's and A100's over the years (to have better sound and MUCH better reliability) but requests to sort these seem to have tapered off to pretty much zero over the last couple of years, so maybe there aren't many still extant (?)
The above are models from the era when I worked for them so I can't really comment on later stuff.

[PaulStewart]

I still own two P150s, my son uses them on his system. I think I have the matching pre amp somewhere. I used them tp make a pair of TDL Studio 1Ms active. Really sounded good. I also had a complete set of the original X-Series stuff which was pretty good for the money.

[vouk]

Good sounding kit, no doubt, but for me, their reliability issues have been a deal breaker. Have owned two pieces of kit from them in the distant past, both falling short of the mark. I'm sure this shouldn't reflect on their overall or current build quality/QC, but once you've had your fingers burned....
Also, has anyone noticed that they tend to change their product line up way too often?

[jandl100]

I've owned loads of MF.

The good'uns ...

A1 FBP pre-amp. Simply a very fine sounding pre!
A370 power amp. A bit of a monster, but very enjoyable. Thinking about it, quite hard to fault. Not the Best at anything but a great allrounder.
F18 power amp. Wow - huge and hugely powerful. Lovely mids and top but a bit of a soggy bottom. Looks fantastic.
FCD cd player. Pizzaz by the bucketful. I loved it.
F22 pre. Easily bettered in terms of transparency (although valve rolling helps a lot) but very 'musical' - i.e. nice to listen to.
A3 power amp. Yeah, did the job with commendable enthusiasm. Loadsa power but also good with high efficiency speakers, which is quite unusual ime.
V-LP phonostage. Good vfm.

The bad'uns ...

A1000 integrated amp. Assuming similarity with the A1001, I agree with you about the meh-ness, Steve. A very boring amp.
A308 pre. Another bland one.
A324 DAC. Blandness strikes again!
X-Pre. Meh, once more.
X-10D. Hmm.
NuVista pre. Lord knows what the fuss was about and all the rave reviews, did nothing for me.

The mediocre ones ... nothing really wrong, but not that great either ...

A5 integrated and cdp.
MVX pre. OK, but didn't wow me at all.


Currently own and enjoy ...

V-CAN headphone amp.

__


I am sure there have been quite a few other bits of MF that escape me at the moment.

[Kember]

Over the years, I've had a fair amount of their kit pass through my hands. Any old MF kit I've sold has been almost exclusively sold to Far Eastern dealers who seem to fill whole containers with the stuff to send back, which probably explains why there is less MF kit around second-hand than its sales would suggest.

The best quality I think (fit and finish as well as sound for the money) was the E100/500/600 kit I had for about ten years from the mid-90s. I think I had only one capacitor fail in the amp that time.

A bit agricultural in finish but my biggest regret in parting (after the fact) was the Digilog DAC. Not the final word but respectable evidence that some of the earlier DACs were more euphonic than allegedly better later versions.

I can't recall the model number, but wasn't there a rather good small speaker in the late 80s/early 90s? Although IIRC there quite a few Far Eastern knock offs about, so extra care has to be taken to ensure that you are buying genuine MF kit.

I think the V series was reasonably good VFM, too.

The less good already adequately covered above.

Peter