Love that Musical Fidelity amp, they don’t make them like that anymore. I have the X-150, built like a brick crap house.
Hmm, I was also a bit surprised to see that Nick is using a Musical Fidelity amp in his second,Qutest based system.
I've never heard that particular one.
Not enough power for my needs.
But I am currently using the Musical Fidelity X-Can V3 with its separate power supply XPSU and the X-LPS for headphone listening via my Qutest/Mscaler and also spinning some vinyl again via headphones with that stack.
Both my Benchmark HPA2 and my other,more recent,MF headphone amp the M1HPA, need a visit to the doctor.
Luckily both digital and analogue sound very nice indeed with my HD800 and HEKV2 with these MF toys that I had basically retired years ago.
Unlike Nick,I am also using a Musical Fidelity amp in my main, speaker based system.
My Heavy-Weight MF KW550, amp combo which also comes with its dedicated PSU,"77lbs" of watts and current, delivering 900 watts per channel , 0.01% thd between 20-20000khz at full throttle, drives my electrostatic speakers quite nicely.
But also reveals their Achilles heel,which is around 250hz where the electrostatic panels check out and the conventional bass driver takes over.
But from say 300hz and as high as I can hear, those panels can still pick a fight with almost any other speakers I've auditioned except full range electrostatics from a sheer transparency point of view.
I am quite tempted to buy a Martin Logan XL ART "nearly full range" electrostatic speaker even before buying a Dave.
But I doubt Musical Fidelity has got any NEW toys to tempt me. Like most others in HI FI these days they seem more interested in serving the "multi room streaming crowd" since the founder himself retired.
He was a real musician himself and cared about acoustic music.
His own recording as soloist in Mozart's Clarinet Concerto came with my KW550.
PS Imho Qutest really needs the Mscaler to shine.
Without the Mscaler it sounds a bit harsh and unrefined to me with well recorded acoustical music.
Cheers CC