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Musical fidelity - opinions ?

david ellwood said:
The bloke who designed this rubbish should have been locked up.
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Wasn't that Tim De Parivicini, read a few years ago he quit and setup EAR because they took his designs and decided to go with cheap Chinese parts to reduce costs which failed within months.
 
thebiglebowski said:
Wasn't that Tim De Parivicini, read a few years ago he quit and setup EAR because they took his designs and decided to go with cheap Chinese parts to reduce costs which failed within months.
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Tim did indeed design much of the MF kit for a few years but Tim's own company EAR was around years before this. I believe it was myself who was the source of the info on amps failing after a few months, specifically the Odysseus valve integrated which Tim later put into production under the EAR name and with decent parts. The "dodgy" parts were not specifically Chinese but were just not rated properly for the job. The output valves were Chinese though and gave us loads of hassle at the time.... Tim designed, literally on the back of a fag packet, a valve testing and grading machine which I then debugged and got working properly as a design before two full machines were built. These were an impressive sight! About the size of a snooker table and IIRC something like a hundred EL34's powered up at the same time!
Tim and Anthony did have a major falling out but it was over more than just this...
 
What a bizarre thread.

I've had a fair few boxes over the years, and the best of the lot is the Tri-Vista amp imo. No corners cut, no space in the box, and it sounds very good indeed. Only problem with them is that most racks known to man cant cope with them.
 
I have three Musical fidelity units. An A5 CR pre-amp, an A5 DAB tuner (bought when MF were selling them off very cheap, but not used since the BBC introduced the Radio 3 320k feed) and a two box X-Dac V3 DAC and PSU. All have been 100% reliable.
 
I've been running my A3 integrated for more time than just about any other amp I have owned - paired with the A3 CD it has performed almost without issue since day one - and even then it was bought second hand! The only thing was a slightly noisy volume pot caused by dust from a building project which was soon cured with a clean and squirt of Servisol. Together with my Saras this combo works well and still has the ability to amaze many peope who hear it for the first time. I know there may be much better out there but for me this all works well and so I'm not about to change anything just yet.
 
Several MF amplifiers used electrolytics at about or even beyond rated voltage, especially on high mains voltages. These failed very quickly
 
davidsrsb said:
Several MF amplifiers used electrolytics at about or even beyond rated voltage, especially on high mains voltages. These failed very quickly
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They did yes but they didn't fail very quickly as it wasn't in the amps you could cook waffles on.... The B200/P140/P150 had small mains transformers for the power output and these had poor regulation hence they had about 70V on them at idle. Regulation was such that although rated at 70WPC it would give 105W with one channel driven!
 
I use a Musical Fidelity A1 mark 1 for my headphones. The only problem I've had is the volume control ended up going full on one evening and stayed that way! I had a new alps blue fitted and some better specified capacitors. I guess they can cope with the heat better. That was a few years back and it has worked flawlessly since then.
 
Nigel said:
I use a Musical Fidelity A1 mark 1 for my headphones. The only problem I've had is the volume control ended up going full on one evening and stayed that way! I had a new alps blue fitted and some better specified capacitors. I guess they can cope with the heat better. That was a few years back and it has worked flawlessly since then.
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A strange application... especially as it has no headphone socket....
 
I use the old AKG K1000. Yes, they are supposed to be connected directly to the loudspeaker outputs.
 
As a new member to this forum I can boldly chip in with my experience. I make no secret as being a fan of Musical Fidelity Gear apart from some of their strange Super powered add on Booster amps and the A5 range. I have had a lot of pleasure from the Xcan headphone amp range which I still own and run , The newer headphone amps are also good as well once run in. I still have a Nuvista 3dcd player which was far better than anything I heard at the time and replaced that with a 2 box KW25 player which is excellent ( I will probably replace it all with the New Nuvista cd player when it comes out in September). I had a A308 Integrated amp for 10+ years and recently replaced it with an AMS35I integrated, which is sonically in a different league and you can also fry an egg on it while playing music. ( what more could you ask for) I also have a m1 dac , X10d V3 and a vlink 192 so all in all a fair share of MF range since the early 2000's and I have had not one single problem with any of their kit at any time. ( Cue a complete meltdown of my systems next week.) Anyway that's my 2 pence finished with.
 
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