Silver Audiophile Posted July 8, 2024 Posted July 8, 2024 1 hour ago, mfforever said: Now the resurrection of the A1 is really a blast from the past ............ many years ago I had the original, and although I have owned and heard many, many amps since then, I can truly say that the original A1 was an amazing amp..... in particular, female voices were spine tingling and have stayed in my head over the years..... ( BUT, it could have doubled as a short-order fried egg burner ...... got mine repaired twice but in the end had to let it go....... and this then happily began my love of the Musical Fidelity X Series ..... ahhhh, it all goes on ) Yes, the extensive use by MF of 'electrolytic' caps in a hot class a circuit without adequate enough heat sink, was always going to cook the venerable poor caps over time. Good to see the issue was addressed with the new model! 1
betty boop Posted July 31, 2024 Posted July 31, 2024 On 17/8/2023 at 10:49 PM, betty boop said: according to sound stage hifi . com / sound stage australia. the new Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 800.2 has taken the best product award for high end amplifier ! congrats musical fidelity ! https://soundstagehifi.com/index.php/eisa/2023-2024-awards/2023-2024-hi-fi/1817-musical-fidelity-nu-vista-800-2 "EISA 2023-2024 Best Product awards are up. Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 800.2 wins Best High-End Integrated Amplifier. Congratulations! Check out all awards" SoundStageHifi.com what a beast ! This is heavy as he says
mfforever Posted July 31, 2024 Posted July 31, 2024 Soooooo many great amps of over 20 years of MF amps ............... my first true love got me hooked ......... the A 1 was 20 watts ( from memory ) of unconditional bliss ...... to this day I have never heard female vocals sound so evolving and present ( and sadly, too good to be true as it literally cooked itself ) ...... and as my speakers evolved, ( Vaf , Duntech , Yamaha NS 1000 and finally Yamaha NS 5000 ) ...... so did my love of MF amps ....... had the X Series and the A series ( WOW ......... the A 300 was a very nice integrated , the A3 cr power amp is still a giant killer even now ) and finally finished on the Trivista 300 integrated ...... what a beautiful thing ........ a very delicate valve pre amp output into a massive 320 watt of controlling power ....... it is a synergistic match with the Yamaha NS 1000 and the NS 5000 .......... but your speaker cable matching with the Yammies 1000 is CRITICAL and this is a thing not often mentioned on threads .......... originally had Kimber 12 then thought I would upgrade .......... you would think this would be simple by reading all the reviews BUT WHAT A NIGHTMARE ......tried 5 speaker cables from good brands ( around $800 for 3 metre pair ) and most were very average ........ found some 20 year old Townshend Isolda that were a perfect match ( would love to update to the Townshend Fractal cables but have you seen the crazy price ??????? ). Loving MF ............ 1 1
Silver Audiophile Posted July 31, 2024 Posted July 31, 2024 8 hours ago, mfforever said: Soooooo many great amps of over 20 years of MF amps ............... my first true love got me hooked ......... the A 1 was 20 watts ( from memory ) of unconditional bliss ...... to this day I have never heard female vocals sound so evolving and present ( and sadly, too good to be true as it literally cooked itself ) ...... and as my speakers evolved, ( Vaf , Duntech , Yamaha NS 1000 and finally Yamaha NS 5000 ) ...... so did my love of MF amps ....... had the X Series and the A series ( WOW ......... the A 300 was a very nice integrated , the A3 cr power amp is still a giant killer even now ) and finally finished on the Trivista 300 integrated ...... what a beautiful thing ........ a very delicate valve pre amp output into a massive 320 watt of controlling power ....... it is a synergistic match with the Yamaha NS 1000 and the NS 5000 .......... but your speaker cable matching with the Yammies 1000 is CRITICAL and this is a thing not often mentioned on threads .......... originally had Kimber 12 then thought I would upgrade .......... you would think this would be simple by reading all the reviews BUT WHAT A NIGHTMARE ......tried 5 speaker cables from good brands ( around $800 for 3 metre pair ) and most were very average ........ found some 20 year old Townshend Isolda that were a perfect match ( would love to update to the Townshend Fractal cables but have you seen the crazy price ??????? ). Loving MF ............ You remind me of my past self precisely. But, as fate and opportunity came to audition and broaden my exposure to other brands and philosophies, slowly over time MF gear faded one by one from my system. When I spoke to Len Wallis a while back (the Oz MF importer)- he told me of his frustration of dealing Anthony Michaelson. He'd come out with an awesome amp, then 6 months later shelve it with a terrible new replacement model. Some MF amps are great on many levels (price, performance, first time audiophile friendly), and you mentioned a several of those above. On the flip side, many of the new ultra high-end models are definitely not priced to compete with vastly better performing offering from his competitors (and offered at a substantially better price too). I won't dwell too much more, since this is an MF forum (PM for further discussion). On the positive side, we could start by making a list of MF products that excel (others feel free to add to the list). This is not a comprehensive list: A1 Tri-Vista 300 KW 500/750 KW550 X-series A3 series 1
betty boop Posted August 1, 2024 Posted August 1, 2024 17 hours ago, mfforever said: Loving MF ............ same here.. been through a few in main setup..have owned most sets a decade or so .. so got good value from each and resale was still good each step was a good step up as well >The Pre amp and twin typhoons (150wpc) this was a stunning combo and yep owned for a decade...this was fed off the original tuba log dac.. whcih can you believe i still have ! and still sounds great.. this is from 1992 ! thats 34 years old the longevity of this gear .. plain amazing >a5cr pre and power ... this was quite a jump up form the typhoons and the preamp. clarity sound stage, dynamics and the a5cr power was a serious power house.. also as one of first pres with ht bypass very versatile in integrating with my 2ch and av system. also owned this combo over a decade and resale was good.. these are still excellent machines the ones to follow in 5.5 and m6 were not greatly different so goes to show longevity of their designs.. >M8pre and m8 500s power - have nearly had these a decade a step up in price and massive step up in audio from A5 series... i have had good value from these... with each upgrade i have always looked at alternatives and over last decade very happy i went with these. for fun ! in my 2nd bedroom system i have always had a play with amps and sources...started with XA2 and x-ray cd player... also x-p100 pre and xa50s and then tried a3..a3.2 a3cr pre and power and then mighty a300 integrated.. went back to can you believe the little x-a1 and x-ray and the old tuba log is still going great.. ps these saw off meridian stack with their 500 series components, pre power and cd player, it saw off marantz ki stack and also a and master series bruiser of amp in m3 and sacd player.. amazing value i would say the mf gear and something that can stand the test of time.. 1
mfforever Posted August 2, 2024 Posted August 2, 2024 Absolutely agree betty boop ........... so many fantastic and innovative products ......... I have only one regret concerning MF gear, and it is that I never got a chance to listen to the SA 470 power amp ...... now this was a technological BEAST .............. introduced in 1988, 250 wpc , 95 kgs AND the first to use choke power supplies in a transistor amp . Would love to know whether any were imported into Australia ............ any MF monster amp hoarders out there who can answer that question ? Still loving my MF TriVista 300 integrated ...... had it for 14 years now and compared it to a lot of different amps and can still say it is not going anywhere. 1
betty boop Posted August 2, 2024 Posted August 2, 2024 40 minutes ago, mfforever said: Absolutely agree betty boop ........... so many fantastic and innovative products ......... I have only one regret concerning MF gear, and it is that I never got a chance to listen to the SA 470 power amp ...... now this was a technological BEAST .............. introduced in 1988, 250 wpc , 95 kgs AND the first to use choke power supplies in a transistor amp . i checked the time line.. yep listed a370 as a landmark product. https://www.musicalfidelity.com/about-us/timeline yep i remember the SA amps.. looked like heavy gym weights as in would want to have been working out to lift any didnt realise first with the choke supply and yep you are right looking inside some online shots and coke can capacitors many output stages ! one heck of an amp the later AMS range is similar gosh crazy things not sure either ever got here... 44 minutes ago, mfforever said: Still loving my MF TriVista 300 integrated ...... had it for 14 years now and compared it to a lot of different amps and can still say it is not going anywhere. great to hear.. will go down as a classic... 1
chaddy Posted August 2, 2024 Posted August 2, 2024 If I remember correctly at the time I purchased my A300 Integrated a review described it as "a straight wire with a gain control". It is still going strong after some servicing in my Son's system and was the piece of equipment that made me a Musical Fidelity devotee. 1 1
betty boop Posted August 2, 2024 Posted August 2, 2024 24 minutes ago, chaddy said: If I remember correctly at the time I purchased my A300 Integrated a review described it as "a straight wire with a gain control". It is still going strong after some servicing in my Son's system and was the piece of equipment that made me a Musical Fidelity devotee. they have certainly had some pearls along the way like this one ... below my one i had... caused an absolute bidding war on eBay when put it up for sale 1
the-chauffeur Posted August 4, 2024 Posted August 4, 2024 Being in the UK, I've amassed a frankly unnecessarily number of MF odds and sods over time, although I've kinda sorta worked backwards. Like most folks, I didn't have the budget to access the expensive stuff when I started out - and there was at least one piece of kit I was unaware of until 20-ish years after it's release for reasons. For me, MF was always good enough; far from the best or worst but also innovative enough to be different. Over the years, I've watched various trends in hifi and have viewed the behaviour of those who affiliate themselves with brand tribes (Naim, Cyrus, Linn, etc) with suspicion, in part because of the blind/blinkered devotion they often exhibit. For whatever reason, MF never seemed to attract that sort of following which I s'pose is another reason I liked it. It also helps that I live within striking distance of an ex-MF service manager; consequently very little of my gear remained stock for any length of time. It all started with the Tempest integrated. Very much a budget amp that I've still got kicking about somewhere. From there I moved onto the X-range 'cylinders' - X-Pre, X-LP and X-A50s. At some point I shipped most of those out for a pair of X-A200 monoblocks, which I can't bring myself to part with. I also swapped the X-Pre out for the Nu-Vista Pre. And sticking with the cylinder theme, I've also got a couple of pairs of 550 superchargers - I use one of the pairs in my current system, partnering a Musical Paradise MP701 pre and MP-DX DAC. Then there's the X-Ray; great little CD player for its time but it hasn't been used for years because PCs exist. To supplement that, I got one of the very first A3.24 DACs. It's now very long in the tooth in digital audio terms, but I've swapped out the op-amps and regulators for discrete alternatives which updated the sound. I've also got an M1-DAC somewhere that I entirely re-capped and did the same op-amp/regulator refit that I did with the other DAC. All MF stuff from around that time is built on bombproof through-hole PCBs, which makes working on them very straightforward if you've got half a clue and a decent soldering iron. I got out of the equipment game for a while but recently added what are likely to be my last MF acquisitions. The first is a NuVista 300 power amp. I've been after one of these ever since I got the pre-amp but couldn't justify the pricetag. As the technological arms race has continued, used prices have fallen and so I finally got my hands on one. And yes, it's lovely. The other is the real oddball - a Michaelson Audio Odysseus integrated valve amp from the early '90's. As the name suggests, it was one of Anthony's side projects and with no brand recognition, you can imagine how well it sold. After hearing how good it sounds, about the only other bit of kit I'd buy now is the Michaelson Da Vinci Pre/Power combination, but they sold even fewer units than the Odysseus . . . 2 1
betty boop Posted August 4, 2024 Posted August 4, 2024 10 hours ago, the-chauffeur said: Being in the UK, I've amassed a frankly unnecessarily number of MF odds and sods over time, although I've kinda sorta worked backwards. Like most folks, I didn't have the budget to access the expensive stuff when I started out - and there was at least one piece of kit I was unaware of until 20-ish years after it's release for reasons. nice to read about your mf journey TC, its an interesting brand, i think part of attraction for me its always had something of interest and across quite range ! also something thats stretched across what is an enormous amount of time.. i am so glad with AM moving into retirement, project the new owners have only done well for the brand and by going back to some of their treasures.. eg rebirthing the little A1 and the nuvista 800 and other ranges with life breathed back in.. some brands can disappear when the owner founder retires .. fortunately not the case here. ps i saw something about cylinders also coming back too by the way.. if can find anything on that i will post here not sure how trues ... but i am sure some will want it to be ps X series owner still here.. x-p100 and xa50s (though packed away for another day at moment) should possibly sell off some time. the little X-a1 and x-ray through is still in the rack of the 2nd system and now and then gets a run 1
mfforever Posted August 4, 2024 Posted August 4, 2024 Hey Neil ( above ) .............. what a great MF audio history .............. and being in the UK I'm a bit envious of your MF availability .......... a bit like Goodmans speakers here in Australia ........ parts hard to source and pretty high prices in Australia, yet when I look at eBay UK it seems a buyer's dream ( only mentioning this as I am SLOWLY ( sorry about my slack Stereonet postings ) restoring/rebuilding a pair of Goodmans Magnum K speakers - fantastic sounding old school drivers so I'm looking forward to finishing the project ). Your revolving collection of X series amps in all their clever combinations were my stuff of dreams, but limited funds due to young children, crazy mortgage rates of 17% and a wonderful wife with zero interest in hi-fi severely limited my actual buying engagement. and can I say you have some amazing amps there ......... you now have the NuVista pre and power combo ( 1998 / 1999 ), both limited to a production run of 500 due to the tiny number of late 1950s miniature metal -cased tubes that Anthony Michaelson tracked down and outrageously proposed to build ...... have only ever seen ( but not heard ) one set in Australia many, many years ago ....... the NuVista pre-amp is classic industrial Series X styling BUT the NuVista 300 power amp is , in the flesh, a pretty flashy blend of industrial and post - Los Angeles gangster bling ........ don't get me wrong, I LOVE it ! I have the TriVista 300 integrated which is another limited edition of 500 produced in 2002 .......... it is an amazing amp that will drive any speaker, but its gorgeous delicacy is something that needs to be heard ....... I can only smile when I hear Anthony Michaelson talking about the tiny valve that is the heart of the TriVista ( and I'm not making this up even though it seems bizarre ). ...... it was a very limited production sub-miniature triod designed for military use in 1982 and I quote ....... " these tough little tubes were designed in response to the discovery of the effects of a NUCLEAR EXPLOSION on solid state electronics ....... nuclear explosion gives off a huge electromagnetic pulse, so in the event of a nuclear conflict, solid state equipped missiles wouldn't work. " Anthony ironically concludes on the reliability of the TriVista 300 as " truly bombproof " .......... with the TriVista valve having a continuous listening of over 100, 000 hours " ........ my conclusion ......... when those missiles strike, I will be one of the very few audiophiles still able to hear those soothing prophetic vibes of Graham Nash's " Military Madness " melodiously playing out of my TriVista system...... ohhh, I hope Tidal is in a bunker 300 metres underground. and your Michaelson Audio Odysseus amp ( 1991 ) is quite a thing. ........... probably never seen and I'm guessing probably never imported into Australia ........ and probably the ( second ) weirdest / oddball amp that MF ever produced .......... those side mounted tubes were probably a world first ........from the few reviews I can find it seemed a very good amp but it was introduced way before its time ............. BUT this leads me onto the WEIRDEST MF amp ever produced ...... the Chronos pre and power amps of 1989 ......for looks / aesthetics it was going to be a bomb ...... a really strange brew of art deco and " Mayan sacrificial block " ( a reviewer at the time ). ............... even though the amps musicality was very positive and extremely advanced for the time ( each mono bloc had 8 EL34 tubes and 3 driver tubes and delivered 122 watts ) ............ Anthony said commercially " it was a disaster " ....... sold only 50 units .......... so you think it would be hard to bounce back from this as a very small manufacturer........ BUT...... please look at images of the 1992 MF F15 power amp .......... I think this is one of the MOST VISUALLY BEAUTIFUL AMPS ever produced in audio history .......... from the Chronos ( hey, Anthony, were you a bit lost in Classical Greek mythology at the time ?????? ) to this stunner two years later ......... just shows MF was both a commercial adaptor and a stunning designer of high end audio for realistic prices. So Neil ...... thank you for sharing your MF audio journey ............ so many great audio experiences . 1 1
the-chauffeur Posted August 4, 2024 Posted August 4, 2024 (edited) You're very welcome - and thank you! You're right - I now have the Nu-Vista pre and power combo; I had my own Nu-Vista pre for many years before the pre/power combo came up for sale. No, I didn't need another pre, but as you'll have seen from the previous post, I'm not averse to ending up with multiple sets of things if there's something that motivates me to go that way. In the case of the pre/power set, they came from what was essentially an estate sale (not necessarily an attraction in itself). They'd clearly been owned by someone who knew exactly what they had and was something of an MF fan - the power amp has been back to MF for their factory upgrade program and it came with at least one set of spare NV valves. I've had the pre upgraded by the guy I mentioned previously and having compared the insides of the two units, there's a variety of polypropylene caps in the upgraded unit along with some other mods that have improved the sound considerably. The Tri-Vista is a lovely looking amp - and being a fan of shiny things, I love the lighting in the feet; a very clever design choice which is a great demonstration of MF's ability to take existing functionality (the status LEDs on the front of the Nu-Vista 300 power amp) and repurposing it in creative and imaginative ways. If it's anything like the Nu-Vista, the sound will be epic and power almost limitless. I'd always wanted the Tri-Vista DAC, knowing it was based on the A3.24 with a valve stage added. I loved the idea of a tube DAC and MF seemed to be the obvious choice. That was until two things happened - the first was recapping the M1; the second was discovering Musical Paradise. For years I was largely content with sealed boxes but was always keen on upgradability - hence the amount of work I put John's way. More recently, I found myself scouring posts on older internet forums (like RockGrotto) where folks who really know what they're talking about have been pulling stuff apart for years. From there I got the confidence to have a go at re-capping the M1, and the difference it made was very much more noticeable than I'd thought possible. And beyond the discrete op-amps and regulators, I didn't do anything radical - just replacing tired caps was enough. At that point, I realised that what I really wanted was kit that was designed to make working on it very straightforward - and that I could in some way understand its operation. I've always been sceptical of the (received?) wisdom in and around audio equipment circles - stuff like cable lifters and brands like Shon Mook suggest to me there's lots of money to be made from folks who want to believe they can hear new and exciting things rather than understand why something works (or doesn't). I've been guilty of that, too but as I've gotten older, my scepticism has grown with the proliferation of reviewers and sources like YouTube. The internet has a lot to answer for in respect of the exponential growth of the amount of voodoo and woo in audio, but it's always been there to a greater or lesser degree. Enter Musical Paradise - specifically the MP Pre and the MP DAC. I won't bore anyone with the details here - the links are to other pages on this forum where I've done that already. I'm very happy to say both now suit my sensibilities and sound needs, especially when partnered with MF power gear. A couple of bits of MF history that might interest you. In my discussions with John over time, I've discovered Tim de Paravacini had a lengthy working relationship with MF as a designer. He's someone who'd always been held in high regard over here and went on to found EAR Yoshino (not sure when that page was last updated - Wikipedia says he died in 2020!). The Chronos development seems to have been very much experimental and far from successful. John was there during the time that range was being designed and made, and says the equipment bodies were cast aluminium. The castings were bankruptingly expensive to produce and they lost money on every unit they sold. The Michaelson valve range had its fair share of reliability issues; when he brought my Odyssues back to life, John told me the sideways-on valve orientation caused problems with older, less heat tolerant capacitors and part way through production the transformer sizes were reduced to improve reliability. Weight and size were also unconventional for the time - the Odysseus is a very heavy piece of kit, and it's about 30% larger than the accepted 'standard' hifi component boxes. Combine those elements with the cast chassis of the Chronos and put them into a market that wasn't really interested in valve kit (by the early 90s only the most esoteric kit used valves) and John believes Chronos sales only ever amounted to a handful. The units they didn't sell sat at the back of the Wembley warehouse because no-one could figure out what to do with them. But I guess that's one of the costs of being as radically innovative as MF were - not everything they produced was going to be a success. That said, don't feel too sorry for them - John also told me the X-cylinder kit and designs were extraordinarily popular and they struggled to keep up with demand. To commemorate 20 years in the business, MF put out a brochure in July 2002 titled Hearing is believing. Since 1982. It's a 38-page glossy affair with a photo of the inside of the A3.24 DAC on the cover. I'd always assumed it was just a compilation of equipment reviews but it's much more than that. If you can find one, you'll see it's about as close to a corporate history as you're likely to find. Yes, the bold text is taken from product reviews but there's also year-by-year details - and MF's own commentary on - its history and various products up to that point. In addition, it contains an all-staff corporate photo and John can be seen in the middle of page 37. He's aged well doesn't look much different now . . . And if I'm honest, that's about the time I stopped following them quite so closely. I've read a couple of interviews with Michealson and others talking about the realisation (by him) that in order to increase profit per unit, the brand needed to appeal to a different type of customer and that seemed to inform their design philosophy from the early 2000s onwards. If you look at real high-end stuff in the audio world, the boxes are immaculate and often huge - which contrasts wildly with the vast majority of mass-market appeal MF stuff pre-2000. For me, the Nu-Vista 300 was the first serious attempt to break into the (particularly US) high end market, and within five years or so they were introducing some stratospherically expensive kit. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it just didn't have the same appeal for me. It's going to be interesting to see what they do with the company name from here on out in this post-Michaelson, digital, streaming, class D amplifier world . . . Edited August 5, 2024 by the-chauffeur 2
mfforever Posted August 6, 2024 Posted August 6, 2024 Some fantastic history there Neil ...and yes, I totally agree with you that the earlier series / products had an amazing charm about them ........... quirky courageous shapes and innovative technology, fantastic ratio of price to sound quality ......... and the real potential that you could actually find AND afford some of these beauties , especially through great second hand forums like Stereonet ............. still have my eye on a few 20 year old plus oddities to satisfy my curiosity ........... you never know what is around the great audio corner .............. 1
JD1 Posted September 29, 2024 Posted September 29, 2024 Hi hoping I can get some MF owners that have experience with the M6 PRX and the M8500s. I interested in upgrading from the 6 to the 8 and want to know if there is much difference in sound quality and characteristics. I have 89 db speakers nom 4 ohm but probably drop lower. Like the 6 but if there a benefit in changing will consider it. Can't audition as the nearest dealer is a 6 hour drive both ways. Have a couple of other options I'm also looking at. Thanks for any help.
Sounding Posted September 29, 2024 Posted September 29, 2024 2 hours ago, JD1 said: ... MF owners that have experience with the M6 PRX and the M8500s. ... upgrading from the 6 to the 8 Hi. Not quite the same but I had a MF M6i for over a decade. Speakers were B&W CM9. I upgraded speakers to B&W 702 S2 Signatures, it was good but wasn't quite delivering as I'd hoped. I got a MF M8xi and it was like WOW. Chalk and cheese. It had me questioning how good it could get, so I ended up getting MF M8-700M monoblocks. In reality, I could easily have stopped at the M8xi as it was great. But the monoblocks sent me on a journey that involved Auralic streamer and processor, PrimaLuna DAC and preamp, and eventually another speaker upgrade - into high end. Since then I went and changed all the electronics to match the speakers, I've now got a high end system. But I wouldn't have this system if it wasn't for the M8xi being so good. It made me question how good things could get. Settling for the M8xi and a speaker upgrade of sorts from the 702 Signatures could have easily been end-game. More about my upgrade path can be seen in this post. 1
JD1 Posted September 29, 2024 Posted September 29, 2024 Love the look of those speakers @Sounding absolutely beautifuly made. That is a great comment on how good the differnce is. I hope i stop at the next upgrade for my marriage sake. I guess what rebooted me into getting upgrades was my last set of speakers.
Sounding Posted September 29, 2024 Posted September 29, 2024 11 minutes ago, JD1 said: ... what rebooted me into getting upgrades was my last set of speakers. That's how it went. Change speakers and you end up changing all the electronics, then your speakers are the weak link and you change them, then your electronics are the weak link... Until you find the strength to say enough, or run out of spare coin, or you end up with a system that's pretty difficult to upgrade from. Welcome to the hobby. Yeah, fair loving this Tidal system, thanks. 1
betty boop Posted September 29, 2024 Posted September 29, 2024 4 hours ago, JD1 said: Hi hoping I can get some MF owners that have experience with the M6 PRX and the M8500s. I interested in upgrading from the 6 to the 8 and want to know if there is much difference in sound quality and characteristics. I have 89 db speakers nom 4 ohm but probably drop lower. Like the 6 but if there a benefit in changing will consider it. Can't audition as the nearest dealer is a 6 hour drive both ways. Have a couple of other options I'm also looking at. Thanks for any help. i owned the a5 pre power the m6 power the m6 pre is based on, and moved to the m8 500s and there is really no comparison... the m8 500s is in another league however ... that takes nothing away from the m6 prx as the nice power amp it is ... a speaker upgrade took me higher in the amps as well... its just how goes...
JD1 Posted September 29, 2024 Posted September 29, 2024 Thanks Al. Do you still have your M8. I think you moved up the Focal line to Sopra 2 from memory. I think it was posted on the Focal owners page. It's such a hard thing shopping for this stuff blind so I do rely on these pages quite a bit. I like my M6 so if the M8 is an extension then that is very reassuring. Have also been looking at class D Starkrimson and March Audio and Canor Class A amps, so both options a very different direction. The other options are more of a blind faith move than the MF though.
betty boop Posted September 29, 2024 Posted September 29, 2024 1 hour ago, JD1 said: Thanks Al. Do you still have your M8. I think you moved up the Focal line to Sopra 2 from memory. I think it was posted on the Focal owners page. I do still have the m8 pre power JD. and yep my journey has been when i updated originally to focal utopia diva.. while i had the a5cr pre power ... they really unleashed with the m8 pre power i updated to when they came out... now i have sopra 3 ... and wondering still if anything there to upgrade amps further again 1 hour ago, JD1 said: I think it was posted on the Focal owners page. It's such a hard thing shopping for this stuff blind so I do rely on these pages quite a bit. I like my M6 so if the M8 is an extension then that is very reassuring. Have also been looking at class D Starkrimson and March Audio and Canor Class A amps, so both options a very different direction. The other options are more of a blind faith move than the MF though. definitely options out there ..i seem to like the musical fidelity sound .. others seem departures from something i love and how gels with my speakers... so me too if contemplating upgrades tend to shop around but likely come back in the musical fidelity lines I myself would skip the m6 pre power if have m6 already and take jump to m8 whether integrated in 8xi or m8 pre power.... 2
the-chauffeur Posted November 3, 2024 Posted November 3, 2024 (edited) 550K Superchargers At the prompting of another member, I decided to have a look inside a couple of pairs of Superchargers I've got. Given their relative lack of popularity (at least in terms of MF products), there's not a great deal of information on them out there in internet land. So whilst this post is only going to appeal to a pretty niche audience, it'll hopefully help one or two in future. For those unfamiliar, the 550K's are essentially monoblock power amplifiers with the unusual feature of being able to handle both line- and speaker-level inputs. Released some years after the very popular Musical Fidelity X-range of tube shaped equipment, the 550Ks never really found their place; hi-fi buyers had moved on from quirky case designs and home audio equipment sales generally had been in decline for a while. And within a year or so of their release, world finances went sideways. Back to the units I opened up. Inside the cylinders there are two boards mounted back-to-back against a couple of heatsink plates that attach to the sides of the cases. Looking at the boards, they're largely unremarkable from an amplifier design standpoint. Here's an image of the control board: And here's an image of the power/amplification board: What's not shown here is the transformer. It bolts to the floor of the case, and if you look carefully you can just make out some of the windings to the left of the large capacitors in the lower image. These images are of one of my standard 550Ks. I have a second pair that have been modified but I'm a little reluctant to post images of what was done because the guy who tricked them up makes his living from that work. What I will say is that the mods I identified from a cursory comparison include all Jamicon caps having been changed for better equivalents, some of the wiring has been replaced with higher quality pieces (specifically the big black/red wires in the bottom image that carry the audio signals to the output RCA posts) and thermal paste has been added across the length of the heatsinks that sit against the case sides. There are other minor changes like swapping out ceramic caps for Wima equivalents. The other significant change I've made is to swap out two pairs of op amps (one pair per amp; you can see a pair in the middle of the top image - IC3 and IC4). When the original upgrade work was done, the originals were replaced with socketed variants; since then, I've swapped out the component variants with discrete op-amps (think Sparkos Labs). My guess is that if you wanted to do that work yourself you'd be looking at a couple of hundred quid per pair of superchargers - with a lot of that going toward 8 large caps which will run you anything from £10 each. I'm also going to try replacing the socketed op amps with discrete (Sparkos) equivalents and might at some point do the same with the three legged regulators. As to what difference the changes have made, I'm not the best person to ask. I haven't run any side-by-side tests and I don't trust either my ears or my memory enough to comment one way or the other. What I can say is I like the sound of the 'chargers when coupled with a valve pre-amp (Musical Paradise MP-701) and their near limitless power but they're unlikely to win any awards for out-and-out high-end sound. I'd love to say that adding the discrete op-amps made a noticeable improvement to the sound - in part 'cos they're not cheap and I think the amps sound better with them. However, I'm very wary of expectation bias and I'm also not smart enough to know whether the op-amps are used in the audio circuit. I like the change I think they made but YMMV. Two words of caution: Equipment pairing - subwoofers - the 550K manual warns that they don't pair well with subwoofers and specifically, the line level output shouldn't be used with a sub. And they're right - that'll teach me to RTFM. If you want to integrate a sub with the 550Ks, you'll need one that can handle high (speaker) level feeds. Case/heatsink construction - as I mentioned, the case sides bolt directly to the heatsinks with steel hex-head screws running into aluminium. Suffice it to say the aluminium is comparatively very soft and strips out incredibly easily. Use hand tools to disassemble/assemble the sides and try to avoid overtightening the screws or you'll destroy the threads. It's not the end of the world if that happens - helicoil kits are very useful for repairing stripped threads - but it's best to avoid getting into that situation in the first place. Edited November 11, 2024 by the-chauffeur
KRSDarwin Posted November 17, 2024 Posted November 17, 2024 At last count I have 6 x 550K Superchargers. I was using 2 to bi-wire my old Paradigm Studio 100s from a Musical Fidelity M6si. 4 are now with a hi-fi colleague bi-amping his Revels and one I still use to drive my Paradigm centre speaker from my Denon AVR (it’s peeking out on the left of the photo). I have found the 550Ks a truly excellent product. I used to be on the lookout for a 750K supercharger as I always wondered whether it gave audible improvements. 1
the-chauffeur Posted November 21, 2024 Posted November 21, 2024 (edited) A few more notes on the 550Ks. Turns out the superchargers and Nu Vista 300s have more than the manufacturer's name in common. Power supply capacitors - both amplifiers run four large capacitors per channel. As with almost all MF devices made in the 2000s, they use mid-range Jamicons; in both of these devices, values were 10,000uf 80v. MF ran an in-house upgrade programme in the late 2000s and the Nu Vista work included replacing the power caps with better quality Jamicons (with copper tape banding around them for . . . reasons). Non-MF upgrade options include replacing the same caps with Samwha/Kemet 10,000uf 100v alternatives (ideally with higher heat tolerance), size permitting. They're bigger than the originals and will just about fit in the Nu Vista chassis; can't speak for the 550Ks . . . yet. Transistors - both units run Sanken SAP 15NY and SAP15PY transistors in similar configurations. The 550Ks run six pairs per channel, with the Nu Vistas running five pairs . . . albeit with provision on the output boards (and heatsinks) for a sixth pair on each side. It's not obvious why there are four 'missing' from the 300s but it's not unprecedented - from the factory the X-A200s (earlier generation mono block power amplifiers) had a number of unpopulated spaces for transistors. Talking to an ex-MF tech, it seems they created generic audio boards (in Taiwan) that could be used across different ranges and populated the output stages (in the UK) during final assembly with different components depending on the model(s) they were destined for. Transformers - whilst largely unmarked, the transformers for both units look suspiciously similar. The size, shape and wrappings are almost identical, with the only obvious difference being the colour scheme of the output wiring. Another ex-MF tech has said the original transformers used in the 300s were very low cost units - estimating the cost at less than $20 per piece. Non-MF upgrade variations to the 300 include replacing the standard IEC socket with a filtered IEC (not something that can easily be done with the 550s due to a lack of internal space). The transformers can also be swapped for much larger 1300va units - a change that might be possible in the 550Ks but again, data currently unavailable. Edited November 21, 2024 by the-chauffeur 1
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