Disc Players

Time was when Musical Fidelity's integrated amps would be specified a little close to the wind, so when I saw '76W/8ohm' and '137W/4ohm' quoted in the M2si's press release (and on many 'hi-fi' websites) I raised an eyebrow. So it was refreshing to see a more measured view taken in the M2si's user manual where the power output is revised down to '60W/8ohm'. In practice the M2si delivers 2x83W/8ohm and 2x115W/4ohm with 118W/201W into 8/4ohm under dynamic conditions, limited to 169W/96W into 2/1ohm by electronic protection [see Graph 1, below]. So this is a beefy enough amplifier for most likely sub-£1k partnering speakers, the A-wtd S/N ratio an 'industry average' 86dB (re. 0dBW) and distortion within 0.002% over the first 25W of its range to 0.004% up to the rated 60W (all 1kHz). Distortion does not increase excessively with frequency – just 0.01% at 10W/20kHz – while the response is flat to within ±0.18dB from 20Hz-20kHz, rolling away to –3.4dB/100kHz.

The matching M2scd player is based around the Burr-Brown PCM1795 DAC and offers a generous 109dB A-wtd S/N from a maximum 2.04V output. The 50ohm source impedance should prove fairly cable-agnostic while distortion is consistently low at ~0.0015-0.002% over the top 20dB of its dynamic range through midrange [black trace, Graph 2] right up to high 20kHz frequencies [blue trace]. MF has chosen a standard linear phase digital filter offering a good 98dB stopband rejection but with some inevitable transient pre-ringing. The frequency response has the merest (inaudible) treble lift of +0.1dB/20kHz while jitter is below the 16-bit test limit of 116psec. All-in-all, both components are very 'clean' examples of the art. PM