Musical Fidelity

Over the years I have owned a few bits of Musical Fidelity equipment and on the whole it was fairly good. A lot of what I had seemed more suited to classical music and lacked a little pizzazz. The most disappointing amp I owned was an A1001. Totally lifeless uninvolved monster with no musical aspirations whatsoever whilst my A300 was by far the best MF kit I ever owned if somewhat blingy.
There doesn't seem to be much written on the forums about Musical Fidelity kit though there has to be loads of it out there. I am sure this thread may spark some healthy debate from people at odds with my findings? I am at the moment reflecting on some of the amazing kit I have owned and hastily sold on and I surprised myself how much MF kit that has been through my hands. As a company I know they still manufacture amps and cd players even a high end turntable a few years back though as a brand they aren't as heavily promoted as they once were. What are your views?
Are there any big MF fans out there who would like to share their views, experiences or pictures? Just curious.:scratch:

The only experience i have with MF is my X-150 amp. Great build and finish for its price, great sounding amp all round. I have often thought why there s nothing much written or talked about on forums too. The little i have read, talks about the A1 amp, and its reliability. Maybe the reliability issues of that amp put people off Mf, + some very expensive gear which i am told was not that great.

Using an Electra 100 Integrated as my main amplifier since 2011 and with regular service its a Top bit of kit in its day but it didnt sell much at the time lost out to other brands such as cyrus and others. 1996 circa £700 and some are selling today up to £300 so a nice investment for me. :)

I owned an A1 for a while. Great sounding amp but you could fry an egg on the top of it. That always concerned me so it went.

When I returned to the UK and got back into hifi again in the early 90s, my first amp was a MF A1 final edition. It was actually based on the B200 circuit, but in a 'posh' A1 case. It had a separate power supply, and ran relatively cool, being less biased into class A. I loved it, but in those days I was very influenced by the mags, and bought something more fashionable. Being relatively inexperienced, I also didn't recognise just how good it was, it taking quite a few years before I found anything significantly better. Sold to a collector in Holland, who paid me what I paid new plus arranged the collection and shipping. To this day, I still regret selling it.

http://www.markhennessy.co.uk/mf_a1/others.htm

http://www.1pekingroad.com/zaspx/rep...e&orderby=desc

Heard a few Nu/Trivistor monsters and their like at shows, and always thought they performed well.

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Originally Posted by dantheman91

Using an Electra 100 Integrated as my main amplifier since 2011 and with regular service its a Top bit of kit in its day but it didnt sell much at the time lost out to other brands such as cyrus and others. 1996 circa £700 and some are selling today up to £300 so a nice investment for me. :)

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You're lucky ! I had one, too, and when it worked it sounded very nice, although there was a kind of distortion on high frequency trumpet notes that drove me nuts. It had a trip to the factory, but they found nothing wrong.
Later, it started going in to oscillation and took out my Rogers LS6a speakers, killing the drivers, including the woofers. A while later, I spent £100 having the amp repaired and I found a knocked about pair of LS6a on ebay with blown tweeters (replaceable) and intact woofers (not otherwise available). After a speaker transplant, all was well for a few months until it happened all over again !
I wasn't too happy (note the understatement !), as I really liked the Rogers speakers.

Just been listening to the new Nuvista CD player and Nuvista integrated amp. Not cheap (but what is) but excellent boxes.

I've had a fair bit of MF kit over the years. Never had any issues. I'm down to an M1DAC and an old P140 which I can't bear to part with.

I ran a MF M1DAC and MF HPA...a fine combo for HD650s. The HPA also worked really well as a single line active pre. Really well built and nice to interact with.

I think MF pretty much ruined their credibility with all their limited edition products and a few badly conceived ones + crazy over the top claims and marketing. And I know there was a lot of bitterness among some customers to find that their expensive purchase suddenly became available at less than half the price they paid - not that long after they had bought it - when MF dumped failures onto the market, to move them on.

Failures in my opinion.....

Trivista SACD player - many went faulty, unreliable Philips SACD drive, not fixable. KW SACD not much better.

KW DM25 Transport and DAC combo - less said the better.

The Supercharger 750 K - less said the better.

KW 250S system - turkey. These ended up being sold for so little it was an epic fail.

KW DAB tuner - epic fail, also dumped for next to nothing, £1500 down to £250 ish. I note that MF don't even include it in their list of historical products.

I never got to hear an M1 turntable, so can't comment re sound but these didn't fly either.

I also think MF lost their way re how their kit sounded. Nu Vista was good as was Tri Vista but the KW stuff started the slip into a way too forward, hard sound - imho.

The new range X stuff was ok, but I think it has got better, and as such along with their smaller blister pack stuff has helped them get their mojo back, but audiophiles have long memories and those 2002 to 2007 issues didn't help them. I guess maybe MF aren't viewed as being cool and desirable these days, hence the lack of chatter re the more contemporary kit.

It tends to be the older products that folks wax lyrical about A1, A100, E and F series, the cylindrical X products (have a few of these and they are good fun), Old Nu Vista good, Tri Vista bar the SACD player good. I have a Tri Vista 21 DAC I still rate.

No idea about the new Nu Vista stuff, but it seems very dear to me, compared to older kit MF did.

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

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Originally Posted by 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

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Gosh, she looks stunning!

S.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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

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found a couple of pics for the uninitiated

http://www.hifishock.org/galleries/e...l-fidelity.jpg

http://hifisale.narod.ru/_nw/0/70615212.jpg

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...

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

Some photos of some of my old MF gear ...

MVX pre and A370ii power -
http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...psba26e7ed.jpg

A5 cdp -
http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...00/MFA5cdp.jpg

The fabulous A1 FBP pre !! -
http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...0/DSCF7032.jpg

The boring A308 pre and the excellent A3 power! -
http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...eUnosSpain.jpg

:)

I used to own a B200 amp for 4 years (my 1st amp without tone controls), was very happy with it SQ wise, & never had a problem, until I decided I needed to replace it with an Audiolab 8000A for the tone controls :doh:.

Was the MF NuVista M3 any good?

S.

Agree with Jerry on the A370 ( Jerry did I buy it from you?) A good all round amp. Not small though!

Started my journey with MF via an X80, which at the time I thought was good, and moved up through the chain with the A3 integrated, and then A3 pre and power, and then onto the A3.2 pre and power.
Throw in the tube buffer for good measure too, and the A3.2 CD player.

I was happy with it until one of our trade friends advised me that there was lots of better stuff on the market for similar prices.

A370: Name a better sounding high power (about 220WPC into 8R in practise and getting near double into 4R) UK amplifier. Even now ;)

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Originally Posted by Ali Tait

Agree with Jerry on the A370 ( Jerry did I buy it from you?) A good all round amp. Not small though!

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Yes, I think you did, now you mention it!

I think you did an immediate re-cap on it with good results? It was a fine sounding beast before that, as well.

Those grab handles on the front were a god-send! - made a hard 1-man lift quite easy. More manufactrurers of big kit should do that, imo.

Two things I don't like about MF:
1) I met the boss once many years ago at a hifi show and decided he was an arrogant asshole.
2) A dealer around the same time suggested that some products going for review had different parts ie better, than the production models.

Having said that I did, at the time have an A1 which was very good but I wouldn't buy any MF stuff now.
Funny how one remembers some encounters from around 30 years ago but I still wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire.
IMHO of course and without prejudice.

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Originally Posted by jandl100

The good'uns ...

A1 FBP pre-amp. Simply a very fine sounding pre!

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I completely agree with Jerry here - I was hugely impressed with the A1 FBP and the fact that you can pick one up now for around £350 makes it one of the best audio bargains of recent years, in my opinion. I'd have one myself if it wasn't for the up/down button volume control which I dislike intensely - only B&O seem to implement these effectively.

We also had an M1 turntable in the listening room at Mordaunt Short when I worked there and I liked it a lot. It looked great, too!

I am about to auction my Tri-Vista SACD player for £1 no res on ebay - listing should go up today.

Was listening to it last night. Excellent bass from it I must say and rest pretty damned OK really. One of the busted transport ones, though:(

Some really interesting replies here and many reflecting my own experiences. Firstly I have to agree with the view about the A370, an amazing amp. It plays music with authority and grin inducing depth. I had a friend who traded his for a Krell FPB300 which i thought vastly inferior to the A370 for sheer musical enjoyment. He also owned one of the failed Trivister sacd players. I have to admit that in the short space of time it was working it did sound very good. It was at this point I encountered Musical Fidelity's abysmal customer service employees who were at the time the very worst I had dealt with. I did have the unfortunate experience of meeting the head honcho himself too and thought exactly the same of him as printed above. I have never bothered with MF since and doubt whether I will again. I think in a world where a consumer has so many far superior products at far lower cost to choose from the prestige of owning Musical Fidelity flies out of the window. My view is their exceptional success's with amps like the A370 should have been capitalised upon instead of cutting corners to make a few quid. More time building customer confidence and support for their products would still have them being written about in the hi-fi press and online forums, instead they may very slowly be resigned to history. Just saying. :rolleyes:

I have these....replaced my Boulder power amps.

http://www.ultraaudio.com/index.php/.../article?id=54

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Originally Posted by Thetiminator

I have these....replaced my Boulder power amps.

http://www.ultraaudio.com/index.php/.../article?id=54

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Wonder if they'd drive my Lowthers OK? :hmm:

Hmmm...the first pair of Lowthers to orbit the Earth

:dynamite:

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Originally Posted by Thetiminator

Hmmm...the first pair of Lowthers to orbit the Earth

:dynamite:

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:lol:

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Originally Posted by jandl100

Yes, I think you did, now you mention it!

I think you did an immediate re-cap on it with good results? It was a fine sounding beast before that, as well.

Those grab handles on the front were a god-send! - made a hard 1-man lift quite easy. More manufactrurers of big kit should do that, imo.

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Yes, did some recapping, which was a worthwhile exercise. As I remember, it was a mark 2, the mark 1 was supposed to be better, though was less reliable?

Yep, it was the blue-edged 370 mkii rather than the red-edged original.

The MkII A370 had a small daughter board which, to avoid getting technical, reduced the background hiss. The same mods were carried out on other models in the range including the P140 which became the P150 etc. They did take the opportunity to cheapen the power supply capacitors as well.... The design used in this range was by TdP who actually modded a circuit from a Motorola application note for "boosting Op-amp output".
The comments about the head honcho are accurate... I resigned without another job to go to because I just couldn't work for such a specimen. Asking you a question and then turning his back and walking away whilst you were answering it was just the tip of the iceberg...

Should've clocked him Jez. No excuse for being such an ignorant bastard.

Was he that bad? Sounds a right git. I don't take kindly to that sort of arrogance.

Well, he needs to be named and shamed more on here!

S.

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Originally Posted by walpurgis

Was he that bad? Sounds a right git. I don't take kindly to that sort of arrogance.

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Much worse than just that! And Yes Ali I came close to punching him a few times.....
How about sacking someone (always other than white) just 'cos he's having a bad day and wants to be sure someone is having a worse one than himself?? :steam: