Musical Fidelity M8xi

摘要

If you are into fancy-looking hi-fi with machined fascias and decorative meters then the £5649 M8xi integrated amplifier is not for you. 'Sorry, that's the way it is', says Musical Fidelity, though I suspect this declaration of intent for the entire M8 series owes more to Musical Fidelity's founder than the new owners, Audio Tuning Vertriebs GmbH, of which vinyl evangelist Pro-Ject Audio Systems is another division. So 'Made in Wembley, England' is now replaced by 'Made in Austria' on the packaging even though the engineer behind some of MF's earlier and iconic big amplifiers, Simon Quarry, has returned to deliver us more than a taste of the old Musical Fidelity magic in this new M8xi integrated model. The promotional flyer for the M8xi reminds us that MF's journey into the realm of the 'super integrated' began way back in the early '90s with the A1000 [HFN May '93] although, in practice, what it describes as 'the latest and best of the breed' arguably owes as much to the design of its more recent, very high output power amplifiers [see boxout, p41].