Music First Audio Classic 632

摘要

Various debates have long exercised the audiophile community: alongside the arguments over valves versus transistors and CD versus vinyl, the subject of how best to amplify a moving-coil cartridge remains a popular and seemingly unsolvable topic. Enthusiasts either choose head amps or step-up transformers for that initial boost to signal level, but the two are not mutually exclusive as the brand behind this review serves to illustrate. The company in question is Music First Audio, best known for its passive transformer-based preamps, but throwing its hat into the ring here with the £2400 Classic MM Phono Amplifier 632 which, as its name suggests, offers loading and sufficient gain for most moving-magnet (not MC) pick-ups. This is actually the company's second active design following the Reference Phono Amplifier, released last year. The latter is a two-box design and is very much a flagship, bearing a price tag of just under £10,000.