Musical Fidelity

albertchampion

New Member
any experiences out there with this manufacturer's CD, CD/SACD players?

this is a bit of high-end kit that i can acquire in houston. by special order. but at least there is a dealer here which makes me feel more comfortable with acquiring the gear.

recently released the A5 CD player. i have read a review in HIFI News that liked it very much.

so, i went to the musical fidelity website and learned that they are about to release a CD/SACD player in their new kW series.

though i have yet to hear a stereo SACD that offers any sonic advances over my commercial CD's duped to mitsui gold CDR's, i like to think that SACD has the chance to offer sonic enhancements.

on the other hand, i must say that john marks with stereophile touted the music fidelity reissue of jim hall's CONCIERTO. i acquired it. i A & B play it to compare it to my mitsui gold dupe of the original CD. My mitsui gold dupe sounds better. go figure.

so, SACD may be an over-hyped format. And i may be foolish to use SACD playback capabilities as a purchasing spec for the replacement to my wonderful nakamichi CD2.

what do your ears tell you that you will relate to me?
 
Latest editorial from JA at Stereophile repeats that he thinks Sony is no longer supporting the SACD format, so may be a dead technology in the not too distant future. Same with DVD-A. Guess all the big boys are jumping onboard the "DualFormat" CD, which has neither the quality nor space of a redbook CD. They simply don't care about 'high fidelity' any more.

And, isn't the A5 series Musical Fidelity's new 'Chinese' gear?
 
DualDisc is just about my worst nightmare when it comes to the next standard for digital audio disc format. IMO SACD will win out (wishful thinking perhaps?).
 
I think the corporations are just looking for something different enough to get a lot of people to upgrade their storage medium, like from 8 track to cassette or whatever.
 
SO, ODD......

i was in LA for easter and was able to audition the mf a5 cd player. the signal was run through some pretty exotic stuff and played out via wilson-benesch speakers.

very high end.

i wasn't whelmed.

played newly acquired at tower on sunset patricia barber cd/hybrid sacd.

arriving back at home, i played the barber sacd, cd on my current set-up:
pioneer cheapo universal player[DV578A] as recommended by stereophile's editor, amplified by my original naka ta4a, into yamaha yst4a speaker system.

sounds better than all the high-end shit that i have been exposed to.

lots better.
 
albertchampion said:
... sounds better than all the high-end shit that i have been exposed to.

lots better.
Which qualities are better in your current setup?
You won't be at AK Fest, will you?
I seem to recall a guy named Norm Tracy was doing very interesting things with digital... and isn't he in Houston??? Or maybe it's Dallas. Still closer than LA.
 
Yes, I find your demo experience very odd as MF makes some very nice gear. I'm not clear about one thing. If you're looking to get into SACD in a big way(kW is about 8k), why are you demoing a much cheaper CD player? If it's to get an idea of what a MF SACD/CD player sounds like, forget it, they aren't even close. CD 's on my Tri-Vista are very special, SACD is out of this world.

Here's a interesting article on SACD, http://www.audaud.com/audaud/APR05/feature/feature.html

Doesn't look like it's going away any time soon. I love it!!!
 
i wasn't really interested in sacd. it just happened that some high end players featured sacd.

i would have loved to audition a tri-vista, the dealer in houston has none on the floor. he will order it for you, but if you don't like it...tough.

i started this exercise when my naka cd2 threw craps....no repair parts available. so sad. it was a sweet little player/changer. i acquired it when it was first released in 1990. never had a problem playing a disc until the end. read 'em instantly. and though manufactured long before cd-r's, never failed to recognize and play those i created with a hhb-cdr850 or the tascam cd4000mk2.

on someone's advice, i replaced it with a my rants sa-8260. bought it from music direct...no dealers in houston. nice looking. completely unpredictable performance. the only discs that it would read repeatedly were sacd's. commercial cd's and my cd-r's were a different sty.

in my effort to vet the my rants, i went to the only high-end store in houston. linn, arcam, nad. also a mf dealer, but no auditioning components. store didn't have the latest arcam cd player. and told me that it didn't intend to have one for auditioning.

clearly this was a linn store. i liked the ikemi. and wanted to demo it at my residence with my gear[audition room was optimized for linn]. when i made that request, the owner of audio concepts went all iceburgish. and by the way, had i wanted to own that bit of kit that day....uh,uh...couldn't have walked out with one. NO INVENTORY. I COULD GIVE THEM MY MONEY, BUT THEN I WOULD HAVE TO WAIT TO OWN IT. what is wrong with that picture?

one of the apsects of the my rants that drove me crazy was the horrible design of its transport tray. i still cannot believe that anyone would design such a thing. neither can i believe that no reviewer notes it. it is so horrible.

the linn ikemi had the best transport. quiet and silent. the bottom-rung arcam was flimsy. i don't know if the top-rung arcam transport was better because audio concepts didn't have one on the floor for auditioning. REALLY, HOW IS IT THAT ARCAM ALLOWS FOR THAT?

i had to return the my rants. the one that i was shipped was a thoroughly lousy device. and of course, music direct reported - no problems found. hmmmmm. i wish that i had made a video of its dysfunction.

so, i was in LA for easter. musical fidelity and arcam had a dealer there. good. perhaps they had units set up for auditioning and i could survey them.

on monday a week ago i did that. the dealer was a big surprise. LA, capital of the entertainment industry, right? i expected a dealer in the MONIED, western sectors of LA: SANTA MONICA, BEVERLY HILLS, WEST LA, HOLLYWOOD. wrong. only dealer was on western south of beverly blvd - korea town.

not the best facility, but at least they had units for auditioning. listened to the mf A5 CD player. played through top-drawer stuff. halcro, wilson, i cannot recall the preamp. and i wasn't whelmed. what really unimpressed me was how lousy the transport was. flimsy. noisy.

didn't sound as good as my old naka. neither was the sound and transport better than the little $150 universal pioneer that i have been experimenting with since atkinson heralded it. and not as good as the hhb cdr-850, which is at its heart a pioneer transport.

disenchanted with mf, i noticed that the dealer also handled arcam and had the latest top-end arcam cd player on its demo rack. the one that my local dealer did not have. so, i asked to audition it.

it wasn't connected, but connections were made to play it through the same components. and this arcam had to have been brand new as it still carried the clear plastic over its display.

plugged in. fitted the patricia barber disc that i had been using to audition the mf player, arcam wouldn't read it. tried all the pat barber discs in my kit. wouldn't read any one of them. so, we tried the store's cd's. wouldn't read them either.

as i left the store, the salesman kept haranguing me that it had worked on saturday.

perhaps.

then i stumbled upon a sony es dealer on wilshire in santa monica. had a ns-999es player. i really don't have an interest in sony gear. on the other hand, i must say that it had a transport tray as solid as the linn ikemi.

couldn't play it though because there was no amp.

15 years ago, when i last bought my audio gear, the store, b&m electronics[sic] sold naka, mcintosh, yamaha, b&w, etc. they had everything auditionable. they had stock.

today, i find no full-range of auditionables. no stock.

the only player that i have auditioned that has a strong transport is the linn ikemi. but to own it i have to deal with the houston linn dealer. it might happen. but not desirably.

unless i can audition a player, i shall not acquire it.

concluding, trying to acquire a replacement for my naka is driving me crazy.

savvy?
 
and it gets crazier.

i was visiting friends in ft lauderdale two weeks ago. i thought that perhaps miami might have gear that i could audition.

so, i emailed the mf dealer. he told me that his dealer in miami was a bunch of great guys with all the mf stuff for auditioning. so, i drove down to coral cables. should have called first. these guys didn't have a bit of stuff for auditioning. as they told me, we tell you what you need and order it for you. all i can say is, frig musical fidelity.

on the way out of coral gables, on the dixie hwy, there was a strip center with a store labeled sound advice. turns out that it is part of the chain that owns tweeters in houston. totally brain-dead employees. but, they did have a sony scd-xa9000es which stereophile ranks as A+. and they hooked it up and i was able to audition it. playing through a krell integrated amp and sonus fabers.

i was playing my mitsui gold cdr's.

the unit had a solid transport. and played them quite nicely. very musically.

in plantation, cyrus said that they had a dealer. unfortunately, he didn't have the latest cyrus gear for auditioning. i wanted to audition the cd8x and the psx-r.

in hollywood, there was an arcam dealer. over the phone, he said that he did not have the top of the line stuff. but he did have the new solo. so he said. we made an appointment. dealer failed to meet me.

this is all so crazy.

and then there is linn. i tried to acquire the linn classik traveling system. via their net site. no one would answer my emails. and over the last 3 weeks, their website doesn't completely open. at first they told me that i was mistaken. then they told me that i got it accurately. but as of a few days ago, it still wouldn't open.

tell me, would you purchase gear from an outfit that couldn't manage its website?

not me.

buying high-end has proven to be a ridiculous endeavor.

the little pioneer universal player, dv-578a, continues to get better and better as i play it more and more. so sad that it turns itself off after 30 minutes. the circuitry cannot be easily "burned-in". but, it will get there.

as of this date, i have been forced to conclude that high-end is a joke. any high-end manufacturer that refrains from requiring its dealers to have a full kit on their floor for auditioning is missing a beat. even if the gear had to be furnished to the dealer freely, that is what should be done.

here is how it now stacks up. transports as solid as my naka: sony xa9000ES, PIONEER DV-578A, linn ikemi. my hhb-cdr850[pioneer heart].

flimsy transports: marantz sa8260, linn genki, mf a5 cd, arcam.

i hear that there is a cyrus dealer in austin. claims to have all the latest cyrus stuff for auditioning. i plan to visit austin within the next few days to evaluate that gear.

i pray that i won't be disappointed as i hate the drive from houston to austin almost as much as i hate the drive from houston to dallas.

so much noise. so little music.
 
If you find yourself near Washington DC, look up Sound Works in Kensington, MD. Tons of high end gear and even MF on the floor to demo.
 
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