MH a300 vs A3.5?

I had a A3.5 and I was not at all impressed with it. The good points were that it appears to be well made and it has a lot of power. The down side is that you will never mistake this amp for tubes or even 'normal' solid state. The first thing you will notice with this amp is that it is extremely quick or lively with regards to pacing. Normally, I would not think this is a bad quality but it comes at the price of not having any weight or body to the music. Everything is leading edge. After you use the amp for a while it becomes less fun to listen to and starts to remind you of what you do not like about solid state and digital products. That being said, this might be the amp for you in certain applications. If you have a very warm or dull sounding speaker, this might be a good match. I saw a review on this amp, after I bought it, in stereophile. I don't read audio reviews anymore but i was curious to see what they had to say because I did not like mine. As usual, it was a rave review. All I can say is that my amp did not sound like the one that they reviewed.

Like the others, I have owned MF equipment over the years. In my case, it was the A3 integrated, A300 power amp, and CD PRE 24 cd player/ preamp. All great stuff. For integrated amps, I would go in this order, starting with the most desirable first:

308, 300, 3.2, 3, 3.5

Best regards,

Rich

I would go with the A300. I've had quite a few MF amps over the years, including the A3 before the A300 and the A5. I've hung onto the A300 in a 2nd system driving Usher Be-718's and the combination works supremely well. I've not heard the Ohms, so couldn't say what the synergy would be there. I can say that the A300 is a very smooth amplifier, with a wee bit of warmth in the mids and tight and punchy rather than supremely deep bass. I think this is one of the most underrated amps MF have produced.

I think the 3.2 might be better than the 3.5. They call all of them dual mono but they seem to be less so as the series progressed. The NuVista M3 is really good but runs $2k or so. I have one. For less money I would go with the 300 or 3.2.