Many thanks John indeed for upgrading my Musical Fidelity A5 CD player and integrated amp, it’s a true delight.
As I said when you rang me to check that I’d received everything and after my initial impressions. There aren’t enough superlatives in the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary, to describe the improvement in sound I heard immediately. For the first time on any audio system that I’ve owned, I was hearing music as it was intended to be heard.
More richly open, greater detail and a far wider soundstage, both in width and more importantly depth, enabling one to position musicians in live acoustic recordings with dimensional accuracy. I was expecting to hear both a more open and natural sound from the A5 CD player and amp following your upgrades. But not before it had burned in after an initial – and to be expected – period of brightness. Especially as major new hi-end components were involved with the full upgrade you provided. But the level of openness and detail revealed on first listen truly amazing. This was almost eclipsed by the unexpected lashings of deep down controlled bass coming through the B&W 803 Diamonds I own, which was completely revelatory. This was helped in small part too, by your expert recommendation of speaker cable brand to compliment both the speakers and Musical Fidelity A5 equipment following the upgrade. Hence, I opted for hi-end Quadrax biwire cable from Supra which didn’t break the bank either.
As an avid listener of early period music in particular and especially live recordings of Jacobean and Elizabethan broken consort music for lute, keyboards and viols from the likes of Gibbons, Byrd, Christopher Simpson, Matthew Locke and William Lawes to name but few. The initial realism heard from recordings by Jordi Savall, Sophie Yates, Phantasm, Fretwork and other ensembles is simply uncanny. With only better to come from what you’ve said, once the system beds in fully.
So as the amp and player loosen up and settle in, I’m looking forward to an even more natural and open sound stage developing further. With the real expectation of hearing music portrayed with greater and more vivid realism. And of course that will be evident across all genres of music from rock, blues, jazz and contemporary classical too, with a sublimely natural and detailed sound.
When new, my Musical Fidelity A5 audio system was excellent value with amazing musicality, punching well above its weight toward hi-end nirvana.
The upgrade is a vast and startling improvement to what was already, a beautifully open sound. That sound remains but now has added depth, deeper but more controlled bass, incredibly revealing detail with utterly convincing realism in sound staging. My only concern is that should I ever wish to gain a further (and in honesty achieve only a marginal) improvement in sound, I will have to spend very, very serious money to achieve that.
I’ve now heard what a true hi-end system sounds like for the very first time and thanks to your upgrades… I’m delighted!!!