Musical Fidelity Announcement: any impact?

[Laurent]

Hi,

I consider buying both an A5 integrated amp from Musical Fidelity and a pair of B&W 804 (as well as an HTM7 and a pair of 705). I've seen on the home page of Musical Fidelity that they have a product announcement coming up in May and I wonder if I shouldn't be better off waiting for the announcement in case it affects the A5?

I've subscribed to their newsletter yesterday but haven't heard anything from them yet.

any idea on the announcement and its potential impact on the A5?

thanks - Laurent

[DM3000 Owner]

Hi,

I consider buying both an A5 integrated amp from Musical Fidelity and a pair of B&W 804 (as well as an HTM7 and a pair of 705). I've seen on the home page of Musical Fidelity that they have a product announcement coming up in May and I wonder if I shouldn't be better off waiting for the announcement in case it affects the A5?

I've subscribed to their newsletter yesterday but haven't heard anything from them yet.

any idea on the announcement and its potential impact on the A5?

thanks - Laurent

My guess is that the announcement is that they will be introducing the "A50" and it will be 10 times as good as the previous product and better than anything costing 100 times as much...

Don't buy into all of the BS hype. Every time something new is introduced it is ALWAYS better than the old. Apparently, mistakes are never made even though we al know of older equipment that was made worse in the "new" model.

That being said, I have an A308CR preamp and CD player and love them. Check out Audiogon:

Preamp:

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?preatran&1175655174

Here is a nice Bryston amp to match:

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?ampstran&1175997434

[tboooe]

at the rate the MF introduces products, you would always be waiting. i say buy what you want because it will eventually be replaced with something else...

[alebonau]

ah the eternal synics....

I look forward to the release, will be interesting what they come up with.

the A5 range is tops I reckon, own the a5 cd player, a5cr pre and power. the integrated is a very nice amp as well which I've demoed.

I doubt the new release will have anything to do wiht the a5. I suspect it will be one up on the kw750 which is thei most power amp at present. given they say you wont be left wanting for power I suspect its going to be the grand daddy of power amps the likes of the 1000W kwp power amp.

I see no harm to manufacturers continuosly improving product, if they didnt we'd still be listening to scratchings off wax cylinders. And I have a mf pre+mono blocs from a decade ago and though very good in their own right, the current pre-pwr I have is miles better in every which way, so the improvements are sure worth it.

as they say there will always be something better, no matter what product or budget or brand your considering. its just the nature of audio that you can always improve on what you have whether in performance or some other aspect....

if considering the a5 integrated to go with the B&w 804, go for it I reckon it will be a great match. Goes without saying do demo some other same price alternatives to make sure you get whats best for you.

[DM3000 Owner]

ah the eternal synics....

I look forward to the release, will be interesting what they come up with.

the A5 range is tops I reckon, own the a5 cd player, a5cr pre and power. the integrated is a very nice amp as well which I've demoed.

I doubt the new release will have anything to do wiht the a5. I suspect it will be one up on the kw750 which is thei most power amp at present. given they say you wont be left wanting for power I suspect its going to be the grand daddy of power amps the likes of the 1000W kwp power amp.

I see no harm to manufacturers continuosly improving product, if they didnt we'd still be listening to scratchings off wax cylinders. And I have a mf pre+mono blocs from a decade ago and though very good in their own right, the current pre-pwr I have is miles better in every which way, so the improvements are sure worth it.

as they say there will always be something better, no matter what product or budget or brand your considering. its just the nature of audio that you can always improve on what you have whether in performance or some other aspect....

if considering the a5 integrated to go with the B&w 804, go for it I reckon it will be a great match. Goes without saying do demo some other same price alternatives to make sure you get whats best for you.

I love Musical Fidelity's equipment and yes, advances are made. But to wait on a new model because of a press release, or a salesperson telling you that your 2 year old equipment is outdated just because a new model came out is crazy.

I play with vintage equipment too and there is usually a certain timeframe to look for because many of the "improvements" to the new models take something away.

My point is that to wait and buy into the hype does not make sense. If he found something that he likes he shoudl just get it now. If he has not made a decision, the A308CR preamp and Bryston amp on Audiogon are really nice and will cost about $2500. Really can't go wrong with that.

[Laurent]

Thank you all for the feedback. I agree that always waiting for the latest technology is not very helpful. I'll go on and plan a demo as foreseen.

alebonau, I have noticed that you own Mission 753 - that's exactly what I have too and what I consider upgrading to B&W 804. If you have listened to B&W then I'd be happy to discuss your impressions as I still have to plan the comparison session (753 vs. 804 powered by the A5).

Also, I was wondering if you could elaborate a bit on the difference between the integrated A5 and the A5cr pre and power. I'm clearly not a specialist in this matter and find it hard to figure out the differences based on the technical specs. What's the benefit of splitting the pre and power amp?

You can always contact me directly if these questions are not in line with this particular (very interesting) forum.

regards,

Laurent

[RNKC]

An alternate view here - sometimes waiting can be advantageous. When you consider it, May isn't really that far away. If you're convinced that model x is good for you, then what do you have to lose by waiting? Model y will be better, but in your estimate may not be worth the extra $$$. And invariably, when model y is introduced model x goes down a bit in price at least on the used market and probably in the store as well as the dealer tries to get rid of the old stock.

If it was me, I'd wait until May and spend the intervening time convincing myself that model x is The One To Get. Then when I get it (after having saved some $$$) I'll be extra happy.

[alebonau]

Thank you all for the feedback. I agree that always waiting for the latest technology is not very helpful. I'll go on and plan a demo as foreseen.

alebonau, I have noticed that you own Mission 753 - that's exactly what I have too and what I consider upgrading to B&W 804. If you have listened to B&W then I'd be happy to discuss your impressions as I still have to plan the comparison session (753 vs. 804 powered by the A5).

Also, I was wondering if you could elaborate a bit on the difference between the integrated A5 and the A5cr pre and power. I'm clearly not a specialist in this matter and find it hard to figure out the differences based on the technical specs. What's the benefit of splitting the pre and power amp?

You can always contact me directly if these questions are not in line with this particular (very interesting) forum.

regards,

Laurent

hi laurent yes have the mission 753 and had them for many years. I actually have demoed the b&w 804's and perhaps the b&w fans might not like this but I do not think they are enough of a jump up from the 703 that I also heard in the store.

the mission 753 is actually quite a good speaker both in detail, sound stage and its balanced sound. With what I heard of the 904 I beleive you'd need ot spend more further up in the B&w range 802D in the minimum to get yourself enough benefit to jsutify the upgrade.

Now I persoanlly havent compared the 804 and the 753 on my system, and you'd need to do that on yours to get an exact answer. my comment is jsut based on an audition of instore of the 804 that I walked away from with the impression not worth the $8000 aussie to upgrade.

re the amps I have demoed both the A5 integrated and the a5 pre-pwr. the integrated is a sensational amp in detail, soundstage, clarity and the way it does delicacy. where the A5 pre-power improves on is more expilict detail, and the ability to do not just delicate details but goes further in the slam and dynamics.

Depends I guess how you like your music, if chasing dynamics the a5 pre-power can take you a step up but its also a step up in price so some thing you'll need to demo for yourself to decide if worth the benfit.

re the benfits of a pre-power vs an integrated. the pre-power has separate boxes, so less chance of intereaction between the pre & power circuits, the separate pre and power amps have their own power supplies so the draws on the power amp does not effect the performance of the pre. the pre-power have choke regulation on their power supplies to regulate the power supplied and remove mains bourne intereference. the pre-power comes with a moving coil phono stage vs the integrated that jsut has a moving magnet phono stage built in. Like in my situation the pre can be placed in cabinet to the side and the power amp near the speakers.

the biggest difference with the power amp vs the integrated is the power amp has 8 sanken output devices per channel. the integrated has 4 per channel. lot more grunt on tap with the power amp ! the pre is a serious pre weighs on its own about the same as the integrated.

on the down sides...you'll need an additional interconnect between pre and power. there are two boxes, separate pwoer supplies etc so cost is greater than the integrated. with the integrated its only one box you need to fit in your system.

[Laurent]

That's quite interesting. In fact my upgrade journey all started as I was getting disappointed by my new multichannel amp's performance in pure stereo listening.

I had just upgraded my good all stereo amp (NAD) to a multichannel amp (Denon 3805) and added the necessary Mission speakers to my old 753. But I was really missing something when playing CD's.

After exploring the route of an upgrade of my multichannel amp to a top one I decided that this didn't make sense. Instead I decided to go for a best of breed approach that is to further use my Denon for multichannel while using my NAD for pure stereo. I simply bypass the Denon amp for the two main speakers - with a clear quality improvement upon the Denon.

This set up is still tricky as I still use the pre-amp of the Denon and totally bypass the pre-amp of my NAD. This means that I can't use a dedicated CD player on my NAD and that I'm bound to the (little) quality of the Denon pre-amp. An alternative set up would be to use one line entry (not to bypass the pre of the NAD) but in that case the volume set up of the multichannel environment becomes impossilble as the two volume buttons are active simultaneously. A nightmare... Anyway to make a long story short I've found two stereo amps that can be used in such a set up properly: you use a dedicated line entry (home theater) that will bypass the volume of the amp. These two guys are Simaudio Moon I-3 and Musical Fidelity A5.

In this journey I have put my speakers in question as well and this is how I got to demo the B&W. I started to demo the 704 then the 703 and immediately the 804. I demoed them with the Moon and to be frank it didn't give me that wow effect. They are perferct but the 753 aren't bad either...

Moreover I have always bought into the 'big amp with a lot of power' approach and the Moon might be a bit short to drive either my 753 or any other B&W 804. This is why I'd like to demo the Musical Fidelity.

I called the sales person who is ok to demo the A5 with the 804 and will allow me to bring my own 753. I guess that's the only way to be able to draw some conclusion.

Before I do the demo I am still wondering if I can get this wow effect from this new set up (either MF and Mission or MF and 804). I wonder if that sort of difference in quality is not something more subtle that only time can reveal? The demo will tell..

Finally, in case you want to know the dedicated CD player I have in mind to go with the A5 is the Cambridge Azur 640.

thanks again for your valuable feedback.

Laurent

[alebonau]

ah laurent you have discovered that the denon 3805 although great for ht is really not somethign to do 2ch justice. and reasonable 2ch nad gear even is an easy good step for the denon.

if you have a combined system to get the best for 2ch its best avoiding the ht gear completely and stickign to 2ch stuff for 2ch listening.

as you have also discovered there are 2ch integrated and pre-amps with a ht-bypass, ht-direct input that make this easy by bypassing their vol control for ht integration.

there are a few 2ch integrateds with ht bypass the moon and mf are two good examples, others in their league is the krell kav400 and the similar priced electrocompaniet integrated though youd have to check on the electrocompaniet to see if still comes wiht that feature. If going he pre-pwr route there are 2ch pre-amps from mf, moon, krell, electrocompaniet, audio research, nu-force, primare etc all just depends on the budget !

I think its great you've decided to demo really the only way to know and great your dealer has let you take your 753 in - only way to compare. What might be the next step if you feel you have found a better speaker is to ask to borrow that for a home demo to make sure it sounds the business in yoru room and setup and so you can also get to spend some quality time with it for extended listening.

re b&ws and mf theres a few posts from people with that combination, might be worth talking to them as well.

http://www.htguide.com/forum/showthread.php4?t=24754

re the cd player if going the mf route the a5cd is really a great match. think theres some synergies going on there..otherwise many many brands of cd players out there jsut hte matter of comparing for your self to find whats best for yourself.