Musical Fidelity

A1 (2023) Integrated Amplifier

£1,499 RRP

Behold the second coming of the Musical Fidelity A1! Well, the third, actually – but let’s discount the short-lived ‘new A1’ that Antony Michaelson launched some fifteen or so years ago, which bore scant resemblance to the 1985 original. As far as I’m concerned, this one is the real deal – the true successor to the iconic nineteen-eighties classic.

What was so special about the original when it appeared on hi-fi dealers’ shelves back in the mid nineteen-eighties? In a word, its sound. Although you’d never call it neutral, this Class A design was exceptionally pleasing on the ear. It was about the nearest that most contemporary hi-fi buyers could get to a good valve amplifier. It was warm and sweet, yet clear and detailed – with a delicious smoothness across the midband, which is where most Class AB amplifiers impress the least. The latter can sound bright, brittle or even mushy, but the switching distortion that emanates from Class AB designs was conspicuous by its absence in the A1.

That’s not to say it was perfect – far from it. This amplifier was regarded as a slice of ‘budget esoterica’ in the sense that it was superb but flawed. Any serious review of the new A1 can’t ignore the downsides of the old one. I have owned one for decades, so I am well qualified to speak about it. The original amp was an inspired design, the product of one of the hi-fi industry’s best-ever valve amplifier designers – the now sadly deceased Tim de Paravicini. He was very proud of it and spent two years developing a prototype, he once told me. Musical Fidelity’s founder Antony Michaelson, then paid a respected UK industrial design company to production engineer it, and it was launched soon after.

Yet you might say it had a ‘difficult childhood’. The problem was its cooling system or lack thereof! Here was a 25W solid-state design biased heavily into Class A, crammed into a compact, slimline case with no air vents! True, the case was ribbed so as to act as a heatsink, but this was marginal at best. At that time, the component quality of the original was only adequate, and so after a period of use, parts would begin to fail due to the high temperatures inside the amp. Tim de Paravicini once told me that he’d designed the A1 to run at 65C on the heatsink – and it’s true, the healthy ones do. It’s just that ageing components, dust and sub-optimal placement soon conspire to make mayhem.

UP CLOSE

This new A1 is designed to recreate the magic of the original, but not its ‘thermal issues’. This amplifier, overseen by Musical Fidelity’s Head of Development Simon Quarry, sets out to reproduce the original A1’s sugary-sweet, euphonic and fluid sound, but without going absent without leave, so to speak. It’s similar to the original in terms of electronic design, but with the rough edges ironed out for better reliability and with superior quality components for the same reason. The company says it has, “only made changes to improve specific technical characteristics and satisfy modern requirements.”

The original’s preamplifier circuitry has largely been carried over, but there is now a ‘Direct’ switch on the fascia that bypasses the gain stage before the volume control. This means that the preamplifier stage applies roughly 10dB less gain (32dB), making it better suited to modern, relatively high output sources. It could potentially lower distortion and also give a wider range to the volume control. Speaking of which, a new ALPS RK series motorised potentiometer is fitted for greater channel accuracy and remote control functionality.

A low-noise MM/MC phono stage is retained as per the original, alongside five RCA line inputs, plus fixed-level and variable outputs. It is said to have automatic impedance-matching for MC cartridges and a low-noise design. The power supply is said to be “inspired” by the first A1 but ‘updated’, with dedicated power supplies for the left and right channels. The company says that more efficient dual-mono split-rail windings have been used, and fully independent supplies for the left and right channels now power the amplifier. Each power amp section now has double the supply capacity, reducing ripple and noise artefacts, it is claimed.

The power amp part is also now able to dynamically ‘slide’ into Class B when the allowable current draw is exceeded. It has a discrete layout and 25A Planar Audio transistors in the power stage. The result is a claimed 25W into 8 ohms, with 25A of maximum current output. Damping factor is put at 150, which is low for a solid-state design but much higher than a valve amp. If this figure is to be believed, the A1 isn’t going to exert particularly strong over the speaker cones it is driving, relatively speaking. Signal to noise ratio is quoted as 82dB, and frequency response a wide 10Hz to 40kHz (+0, -1dB). The amp consumes up to 130W, which is the equivalent of two bright household lightbulbs – so it’s considerably more power-hungry than your average Class D design.

Physically, this new amplifier is fairly close to the dimensions of the original, at 440x68.3x283.3mm [HxWxD], but a little longer; it weighs a solid 10.5kg. Visually, it retains the distinctive look of the first A1 but isn’t identical. Unlike the very first examples of the original, it has perforations in the casework on both sides to improve airflow. Last but not quite least is the lovely eighties retro remote control, which was never included with the original. The industrial design of the A1 repeats that of the 1980s original, with its angular front panel, full-length top-mounted heatsink and side-mounted ventilation panels. The new amp also runs very hot – so much so that it will burn you if you put your hands on the top heatsink for any period of time – so handle with care.

For the purposes of this review, I tried the new A1 with a variety of speakers but did much of the listening with my pair of Cambridge Audio Aeromax 6s; these are a very easy load and have 90dB sensitivity. The source was a Chord Hugo TT2 DAC in direct DAC mode, going into the A1 with its internal gain stage switched off; the latter gave the best results.

THE LISTENING

There is a very strong family resemblance in sound between the original 1985 A1 and the 2023 model – the latter retains the former’s sugary-sweet tonality and lovely sense of timing, which are the original’s two strongest points. It also improves upon it in output power, speaker driving ability, and fine detail resolution. Additionally, the bass is fractionally tighter now, and the soundstaging is better defined. The downside is that the new A1 lacks a smidgeon of the original’s euphony and charm, which is a polite way of saying that the 2023 amplifier is more neutral, I suppose!

Compared to its adjacent price rivals, the new A1 is very eccentric – it is very much what I would call “a character amplifier”, one that is bought for its specially authored view of the recording. Rather like a good valve amp, the new Musical Fidelity brings something special to the party that almost defies description. I suppose it’s the hi-fi equivalent of driving a fine classic car, tweaked and tuned for modern road conditions – it’s not as good as a modern car but is so much more fun that you don’t notice the choppy ride and mediocre brakes. Compare this to Musical Fidelity’s latest M5si, for example – just fifteen percent or so more expensive than the new A1, it sports 150W RMS per channel into 8 ohms and is a brilliant all-rounder. Yet somehow, the new A1 is often more beguiling to listen to.

In the great scheme of current mid-price integrated amplifiers – and I’ve heard almost all of them over the past thirty years – there is nothing on sale that sounds as charming as the new A1. It takes recordings that are famously bright, such as Supertramp’s Oh Darling from Breakfast in America, and renders them in an exquisitely luxurious and silky way. This is a great late seventies rock ballad, but the mastering on this album was optimised to stand out on FM radio and is sharp enough to blow your wig off via most amplifiers. Good Class AB solid-state designs like Simaudio’s MOON 250i V2 make it sound quite fierce and are right to do so. Ditto Naim’s NAIT XS3 and the new NAIT 50, both of which I’ve auditioned this track on recently. Yet the new Musical Fidelity makes it sound like it’s a super-smooth early seventies rare groove recording, the sort of thing you’d get from Stax-era Isaac Hayes.

So yes, the new A1 is warm-sounding in tonal terms, to put it mildly. Like its predecessor, it does not give you a Sugden-style Class A experience, where the music is clinically precise and tonally neutral to a fault; indeed, the Sugden A21a sounds bright on the aforementioned Supertramp track because it’s way more transparent. This said, the 2023 A1 is still noticeably less coloured than the 1985 A1 – it has a more taut yet less rich bass and better-resolved midband and treble. This makes a more practical proposition in today’s world.

As previously noted, the new A1 also has a great sense of timing. Music just seems to flow along, demanding very little from the listener. It doesn’t really get its teeth into the recording’s major dynamic contrasts, as there’s not enough power on top. Yet it is still very good at getting everything in the recording to gel together naturally and never sounds forced or processed. I cued up the classic electronic rock of Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygene, and I found myself absolutely beguiled. Instead of listening to the pounding bass and percussive drum machine work as I had been with M5si, I was enraptured by the synthesiser sound. It was beautifully squelchy – as any early analogue synthesiser should be – and had an almost haunting, ghostly presence. The delicacy with which the 2023 A1 imparted this was quite special; indeed, this amp has an ability to communicate on a musical level that exceeds anything else I’ve heard at or near the price.

Yet it’s not all good going for the new A1 – with a favourite amplifier torture track, things didn’t do quite so well. Simple Minds’ New Gold Dream is a great thumper of a recording; it has a super-strong bass guitar line that’s hell for any amplifier under about 50W per channel, even with reasonably efficient speakers. The last time I played this, it was with a 25W-rated Naim NAIT 50, and the little amp from Salisbury clearly wasn’t enjoying itself trying to resolve that thunderous yet chewy bass guitar work. Prior to that, I’d tried this track with the aforementioned Musical Fidelity M5si, which didn’t have a care in the world, even when driving much more demanding speakers such as my Yamaha NS-1000Ms. The 2023 A1, however, sounded more like the NAIT 50 in this situation – it was fractionally tighter as it manfully slogged along, but there was little in it as both were really struggling.

So unless you’re running speakers in the 95dB and above sensitivity range – Klipschs, JBLs, etc. – then this amplifier really isn’t gutsy enough for loud, dense rock music played at high volumes. All the same, the new A1 was definitely better than the old one in this respect; there’s a sense that the power supply has been on a weight training course, and can now make the most of what little strength it has. Bass was fractionally tighter than the original, but we’re still a long way behind Musical Fidelity’s own M5si, for example. As with the original, you’ll need to match the new A1 carefully with your loudspeakers and not expect it to deliver a Krell-style sound at parties.

Feed this amplifier with what it likes best, which is relatively simple programme material, and it absolutely shines, however. The delicious sound of Randy Crawford’s voice on One Day I’ll Fly Away was enough to make me forget all this amplifier’s foibles. I’ve seen her in concert and think she’s an amazing talent, but this sadly doesn’t translate very well to recordings. Yet the new A1 absolutely belted out this track and caught a great deal of the original emotional intensity. When not asked to heave around too much bass, this amp’s talents quickly come to the fore, letting the listener luxuriate inside the recording, with all its delicate, sensual charms.

THE VERDICT

Musical Fidelity’s new A1 integrated amplifier is better than the original in pretty much every respect – and unlike some ‘anniversary’ integrated amps, this company hasn’t gone for boutique pricing. It is true ‘affordable esoterica’, then – offering performance in some respects that’s hard to beat at three, four or maybe five times the price. However, it does need careful loudspeaker matching and isn’t at its best in large rooms or with pounding loud rock music. So, if you’re interested, do try to audition one with your own speakers if possible. All these caveats aside, this is a very special affordable amplifier and a delight to spend time with.

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