2. amps-preamps
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Musical Fidelity A1 experiences

I have the original MF A1 and I never had the chance to get the right speakers for it. My past speakers that i used are Epos ELS3, Magnepan 1.6, MB Quart Domain 30's, Dynaudio Audience 52, Merrill Zigmahornet "fullrange" and never got the sound right. All of the speaker mentioned the sound it created, the bass is quite thin and the highs sometimes fatiguing. Does anyone have experiences on the best speakers to use? or is it the amps fault?
xtian_lugz

Showing 2 responses by rottenclam

rottenclam
59 posts
 
Just want to weigh-in on this thread a bit.

I picked up the newer version of the A1 recently, and I'm really liking it on my Quad ESLs (I use the originals). Value-wise this is a superb buy. Comes with a USB input and an MM phono stage. Original circuit was designed by Tim deParavicini (I'm a big fan of his work) back in the day.

This new version of the A1 is a bit more powerful than the older version (36w vs 20w), but it is all the power that I need so it works well in my system.

I'm still trying to get my head around the quality of the MM phono stage. So far I see it as just 'adequate', but I have to do some more critical listening before I really make a declaration. I'll admit to wanting to try a step-up transformer with it so that I can really put it through its paces, but I dont have a SUT, so that experiment may have to wait a while.

My weakness is for solid-state integrated amps. I've gone through about 12-15 of them in the last 10 years. One of them was the Musical Fidelity M3 Nu Vista. I loved it a lot, but was disappointed with the quality of the volume pot. The volume control on this new A1 seems to be a bit different (still not sure of the quality though...time will tell).

Anyway, just wanted to share some of my thoughts on this particular classic (or at least the new version of the old classic). If your speakers can hang with the little amount of power that this amp kicks out, I think it is a very good buy.
rottenclam
59 posts
 
Yeah - I dont think this new A1 has a pot. It may be using some buffer / digital-relay type of contraption.

The old A1 was pretty famous for some reliability problems. My instinct is that Antony Michaelson is not as much of a cheapskate nowadays, given that his company has a lot more momentum than it did back in 1984 when the original A1 rolled out.

However, sub-standard volume pots are the industry standard in hi-fi. There are very few manufacturers that abhor them (Ayre, Tom Evans, and Gryphon come to mind). After having a few bad experiences with cheap pots, anytime I seek out a higher priced linestage / preamp / volume-control; I make sure that I know what kind of pot they're using in that component before I buy it.
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