Once in a while, a component comes along that really makes you sit up and take notice. Vinyl has been around for a long time and for many years, most people, had you asked for their opinion, would have gladly told you, without a shadow of a doubt, that the turntable’s era was well and truly over. Well, we all know that hasn’t been the case. Plus, with the advanced materials, mechanical and motor technologies, our groovy black plastic discs have become ever more appealing, more complex, feature packed, and OTT. Even with regards to outrageous design architectures and pricing, the playing field is now, more than ever, not even!
Musical Fidelity
Found in 1982 by Antony Michaelson, and now owned by the Austrian Audio Tuning Group, Musical Fidelity began as a passion project, first creating “The Preamp” to satisfy the shortcomings of the TVP-1 pre-amplifier from predecessor company Michaelson & Austin. Most reading this will be familiar with Musical Fidelity as a business and probably familiar with some of its iconic products such as the A1 integrated amplifier.
Musical Fidelity has a rather iconic status, created by clarinetist Michaelson, also a true hi-fi enthusiast. More often than not, its products sit in the affordable and reasonably attainable high-end brackets, with performance and industrial aesthetics being its forte. From its conception in 1982, Musical Fidelity has brought us some well considered offerings, such as the gargantuan A370 and SA470 power amplifiers, speakers with polypropylene drivers, the ‘Digilog’ DAC, P170, SA570, the A1000 in 1992, and the distinctive X-Series cylindrical products.
The Nu-Vista range first appeared in 1997, has become ever bolder in its industrial design, and is well respected for its commitment to quality construction and performance. I remember my first visits to hi-fi stores in Glasgow in the early to mid-90s, where the brand always carried a well-earned helping of respect from the sales staff and customers alike. Good gear, no nonsense.
Musical Fidelity states the following regarding the Vinyl 2, “The Nu-Vista Vinyl 2 is the new flagship of Musical Fidelity phono preamplifiers, an ultra-high performance, highly accurate MM/MC phono preamplifier with a discrete Class-A Nuvistor tube stage. Beautifully designed and executed with massive casework, we set out to make a phono stage without any practical limits. It’s designed in such a way to ensure you cannot overload the input stage or encounter any practical limitations in the output driving capacity. Its purpose is singular, to be a conduit for music. It exists to faithfully convey the artists’ intent, their emotions, the passion, directly to your ears and heart.”
Here and Now
It’s all very well living with a good reputation, considered as a respectable character by your peers and customers and continuing a tradition of punching out reliable gear, but is that enough in the current climate? More and more, we see every day products becoming part of the “luxury” category, a “must have” and elevated to investment grade status. There are aspects of the hi-fi industry that are heading in that direction, sitting beside Rolex and Porsche for their collectability and ability to, somewhat, store value. Whether or not that’s a pragmatic argument I will leave to the reader.
Pragmatically, a brand needs to offer something of tangible value, of enjoyment, or at least more features than the competition. So how does the new phono pre fair in this climate? Well… this is where I sat up and took notice. I have memories of getting home from school and playing records all night. After finishing my homework, of course. But it really was every day. Reading the liner notes, loving every moment of the ceremony that was listening to vinyl. Headphones on and radio until I fell asleep. This continued through university. Then, the world of music production opened up for me. I spent time designing and working in recording studios and radio stations globally.
It’s this romantic era that flooded back to me when I first started playing the Nu-Vista Vinyl 2. For many years, and even now, I’m a huge CD proponent, and I have no issues with streaming, apart from perhaps the artists getting a raw deal. Yet, there it was, that full, rich, dynamically coherent, and ultimately enjoyable sound of a record, in all its glory. I never wanted for anything when I used to listen to records on my cheap as chips Panasonic midi system in the late 80s, I didn’t know any better and it didn’t matter. I loved music. Dire Straits, Chris Rea, Led Zeppelin, whatever took my fancy, embracing me on a journey I never wanted to end.
The constant tug of digital mediums, social media, constant contact, it didn’t exist then, it was just me and the music and total commitment to the moment, no distractions. I have been using a Whest Audio pre stage for the past few years now. Recently, I looked at adding another pre stage to the collection for my increasing turntable collection, but hadn’t come across anything that made me feel ‘the Wow’. Until now. Oh, but let’s not go there yet. Let’s wait and talk about the specs.
The Nu-Vista Vinyl 2 is way more than the sum of its parts. Onboard, Vinyl 2 offers a well thought out system of dynamic adaptation. With the ability to choose between Moving Magnet (MM) and Moving Coil (MC) cartridges, having both connected simultaneously, and the ease of changing the loading from the front dial, it’s super-easy to switch between different turntables/tonearms, adapt to different cartridge loads, and indeed, to select EQ curves from Decca ad Columbia.
For Moving Magnet, there are gain steps of +40dB, +43dB, +46dB, +49dB along with the loading capacitance selections of 50 to 400pF in steps of 50pF. For Moving Coil, there are gain options of +60dB, +63dB, +66dB, and +69dB and loadings of 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 400, 800, and 1 kohm (voltage amplification by 100x) up to 69dB (voltage amplification by 3690x), with clean switching via signal relays. To handle such high amplification levels, a fully balanced design is employed to maintain low noise. Input capacitance and impedance are managed using JFET transistors for optimal performance.
Input impedance is 47 kohm with a subsonic filter that has two settings, offering IEC standard of a 6dB per octave roll-off at 20Hz and one at 18dB. The Nu-Vista Vinyl 2 offers flexible input configurations, with each single-ended RCA or balanced XLR input individually set for either MM or MC cartridges, where each input remembers its unique settings. This technically sophisticated design allows seamless integration with any cartridge and Hi-Fi system. The Nu-Vista Vinyl 2 ensures minimal noise and distortion even at the highest amplification levels. In fact, Musical Fidelity states that the Vinyl 2 has no practical audible noise levels even at the highest levels of amplification. I can attest that this thing is indeed silent, with an absolutely immaculate presentation of source. Remember though, if you feed it a dirty record, you’ll get an equivalent result. Keep those discs clean!
There is just so much to say about this technically. Vinyl 2 has the ability to change the LED display to a white background, a little like the AQWO from Metronome, or have a dark background with blue text. It can be powered by the Uni PSU, helping to keep noise external to the chassis, and it’s built like a tank, with the Nu-Vista casework being common across the range. This is clever design and practical thinking, allowing for savings across manufacturing, and a uniform aesthetic when building a holistic, one brand system. For a phono stage, it’s big. Like really big. Plus, double that if you opt for the Nu-Vista Uni PSU power supply upgrade. It’s a bold design language and I like it, but there may be occasions where people will have to evaluate placement options.
Initial Thoughts
So, here are some of my rambling thoughts from initial reception to now. When I first picked up the unit, I was a little unsure of the size factor. It’s bulky, muscular and heavy to transport. It did not fit in my car in the box. I don’t drive a small car either. So, you’ll need a van, a wagon, or have it delivered. I had to take it out of the box and transport it in the internal foam packing. Its industrial battleship grey exterior may not be the most popular choice for some (for those, Vinyl 2 is also available in a silver finish), yet it does make a statement. Personally, I like it and have always been OK with MF design language. I will say however, that it does follow the aesthetic of the age and it’s well laid out internally, and the design language is uniform and it works in relation to the Nu-Vista line.
I did wonder how easy the navigation would be with the two large front dials and little buttons, but I think you’ll find the Menu structure very intuitive indeed, well planned and executed from a functional point of view, with only a few turns of the dial to get to each page. I like the range of features and the way the interface works. Good job.
So what about sound? Initially I wondered just how much better it was than my existing unit, then I started to experiment with the gain settings and things started to become clear. This is without a doubt, one the best pieces of hi-fi equipment I have had my hands on, period. It’s expensive, let’s not beat around the bush, but it delivers. In spades.
Listening to Fidelity
Where to start? I actually started spinning an album by British rock stalwarts, Magnum, the epic On a Storyteller’s Night. This isn’t the most incredible production, but I just wanted to reminisce and see if it sounded suddenly exceptional. It didn’t. Haha! But I did have a blast and then reached into the collection.
Kids by the band The Midnight is a masterpiece in modern synth pop. Suddenly, the room lit up with 80s inspired enigmatic electro pop. Fantastic! Arpeggiators filled my ears from all directions, electro drums bounced their high energy Miami Vice-esque sounds into the room, and the guitars, and vocals floated effortlessly in a sea of perfectly balanced bass and pitch-black background. No hiss, no crackles, just pure music. It all seemed a little too good to be true. So, what about those gain settings? Well, I gradually turned up the gain, initially using an MM Clearaudio Virtuoso Wood on a Satisfy tonearm. I could not find a single artefact to spoil my fun. Nada. Not a pop, no hiss, just nothing at all. The Nu-Vista Vinyl 2 did not present any components that were not on the record. It just didn’t, full-stop.
I moved on through Alan Parson’s Project, Eye in The Sky. Eric Woolfson’s vocals were conveyed with emotion, contained in a well-balanced and deeply engaging soundstage, enveloping the composition in a blissful array of subtle electronic, detailed nuances between synth and percussion, and layer upon layer of divine instrument separation. Just brilliant.
I then teed up the “Logical Song” by Supertramp which, again, had that crisp separation, so obviously clean, unspoiled, the complex relationship between the piano, guitar and keyboards delivering a real sense of observable cohesion, where every note of each instrument can be picked out without ever disrupting the overall delivery of a complete picture. Everything sits where it should. There’s oodles of tight, clean, dynamic bass, harmonies are effortless, and Rick Davies’ vocals are spot on, no harshness, no grating mids, just perfectly balanced, warm and defined, as it should be. The intensity of all the dynamic shifts in this song are delivered with enough gusto to make air drums and air guitar a dangerously convincing proposition, yet all the while, the entire composition sits all too easily in the grasp of the Nu-Vista Vinyl 2 competence. There’s air, spades of headroom, dynamics for days, and a beautifully clean insight into the track, at all times.
I started to experiment with a Thorens TD1600 MC and due to damage, this needs to be sent off for a rebuild. Oops! That’s one for later. However, I did play with some lesser value cartridges from Audio Technics and the results were comparable. This is a unit which matches and makes the best of your components. Needless to say, if you’re spending $20K on a phono stage, you probably have better cartridges than that. The Vinyl 2 will definitely convince anyone that vinyl is, and always will be, a fantastic proposition for music playback. In fact, perhaps it’s time we all spent more time sitting down and paying attention, without the distraction of the ADHD “skip” buttons.
Conclusion
OK, so I actually had this unit in-situ for a few weeks. Honestly? I don’t think it’s enough time. The unit is so capable, and I mean really capable, and the feature set is so comprehensive that a year with it will still keep you on your toes. There are so many options to explore. The internal loading options, EQ, the gain settings, the sheer quality of the signal, I could go on.
I can’t really fault the Nu-Vista Vinyl 2. I would need more cartridges and way more time to give what could be considered a really comprehensive overview. I would have loved a few months with the Vinyl 2, seriously. There’s a lot to say about the evolution of vinyl playback, and technology hasn’t just refreshed the medium, it has opened new doors to appreciate what we were missing in the past.
While the prices of top-level high-end gear, like the Vinyl 2, is in the upper brackets of affordability, the technology will eventually find its way into less expensive components. The Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista Vinyl 2, however, is here and now and, if you can afford it, this exceptional phono stage is simply a no brainer.
… Barry J. Johnston
www.soundstageaustralia.com
Associated Equipment
- Speakers — Bowers and Wilkins Nautilus 802, Yamaha NS1000 – 2 Pairs – Modified, KEF LSX, REL HT1205 x 2, JBL 4328 LSR, Sony subwoofer, 2 x REL Acoustics No.31 subwoofers
- Amplifier — Mark Levinson No.531H Monoblocks, Quad 606 Power amp, Sansui AU555 Integrated
- Preamplifier — PrimaLuna EVO 400
- Sources — Digital: Gryphon Scorpio, Metronome Technologie Le Player 4+, Simaudio Moon HAD230, Marantz PMD-340, (MacBook Pro 15 - Audirvana, Tidal, Spotify) Sony PHA3, Sony NW ZX2, Sony PCM2600
- Analogue: Marantz TT-15S1, Clearaudio Satisfy Tonearm, Clearaudio Virtuoso Wood MKII, Whest P.20, LINN LP12, Stax UA7CF Tonearm, Audio Technica LPW40WN
- Cables — Nordost Frey, inakustik Exzellenz Balanced interconnect, Isotek IEC, various custom interconnects
- Audio Rack — Custom – Noizy Head , Noizy Head custom iso platforms
- Miscellaneous — Audio Technica AT-AWAS, Focal Listen, Audio Technica MSR7, Mac Pro, Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, Vicoustic room treatment, and various supporting cast
Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista Vinyl 2 Phono Stage
Price: AU$20,000 (Nu-Vista Uni PSU upgrade AU$16,000)
Australian Warranty: Two Years
Australian Distributor: Audio Marketing
+61 2 9882 3877
Musical Fidelity (Division of Audio Tuning Vertriebs GmbH)
Margaretenstrasse 98
A-1050 Wien
Austria
+43 50 443
www.musicalfidelity.com
