Whest Audio MC REF V MK4. My new toy.

Whest Audio MC REF V MK4 – My last present this year!

Well I’ve got it and have lived with this unit for just over a week now.
I’m going to write a smallish review of the unit which was conducted during a late night listening session with a couple of audiophilers. Call them Barry and Gary for now.

The MC REF V is now in its MK4 form and is really nice to look at. It is quite simple looking but on inspection of the internals, contains more ‘stuff’ than most phono stages out there. The exterior dimensions are approx 17” x 12” x 3” (430mm x 300 x 75mm) and you get 2 identical units. YES each unit is a fully self contained channel.
The main audio board takes up about 2/3rds of the whole chassis then you have 2 ‘goldish’ metal plates which go from back to front, then a sizeable power transformer.
The chassis is very well made. It is hand welded CNC aluminium in RED. It is not like my Lamm chassis or the Manley Steelhead chassis which are just cheap bent aluminium affairs. The MK4 chassis is stiff but light which James says needs to be for the internal suspension to work properly.

Load, gain and capacitance changing is underneath tucked away behind a small removable panel. I set my unit up like this: 65dB and 100ohms with 200pf of capacitance. The MC REF V has been designed from the ground up as an MC ONLY phono stage. It does not do MM but can do high output MC. According to James at Whest Audio, at this level you should NOT be using MM – too true!

Having changed some of my main big systems front end recently, I put the MC REF V ( MK4 from now on) into this system which comprises a TW Raven AC/ Graham Phantom/ A90/ Whest PS.30RDT Special Edition/ Lamm LL2 preamp/ ATC SCM150A. The LL2 is not the Deluxe version.

The Raven AC was recommended by many guys here and I finally got to hear one. Yes it’s extremely good. I heard it with the old and new power supply. To tell the truth I could not hear that much (if any) difference in the power supplies but opted for the newer one as it looks much better and I got a good deal.

Back to the MK4. Barry and Gary knocked on the door at about 7pm. Both are recent Whest converts. I say recent because both heard the 30RDT Special Edition a few weeks back and ditched their ‘known’ phono stages and got the 30 RDT Special Edition. Barry is an ex- Boulder 1008 user and says the Boulder really does struggle in a lot of ways compared to the Whest. But says the Whest is so much quieter and dynamic with better everything.

Anyway, back to the Mk4. I have been playing Yellow Jackets – Hornet LP as well as Kate Bush, Coltrane (John), Talk Talk - Laughing Stock, Oscar Peterson and other good stuff.

First on was one of my ‘new’ favourites – a Yellow Jackets track called Priscilla. A lovely track that changes and has much inside it. We all know this track well through the PS.30RDT SE. But now it was the turn of the MK4.
BLOODY WOW!!!! From the very beginning it hits you with a level of detail that sounds like live music. It is really REAL and able to get so much more out of the Raven. The Raven AC sounded like a HUGE ultra expensive turntable!
The lead guitar has so much more power and detail, soul and space and everything has ‘SLAM’ and purpose.
There should be a warning with this phono stage: ‘Should not be used for background listening’. This thing is so detailed that even at low volumes you hear EVERYTHING. The SLAM is there even at the lowest of volumes and the immediacy too.

The musical flow through the MK4 is staggering.
Just listening to Kate Bush – Lionheart, the music just does not stop. It’s really hard to explain but you know when you go to a small live gig, how it’s so musical from beginning to end, well the Mk4 is like that. Whatever you play, it’s bloody musical. I tried my daughters Justin Timberlake’s first LP – musical and REALLY REALLY impressive.
Abba – Move on – unbelievable musicianship, musical and REAL. Gary bought down a real Hifi LP which I actually hate, Jazz at the Pawnshop. Although I hate this LP it was still musical, impressive (yes) but I can’t bare the contrived playing.
Give me any of the 50’s Jazz masters any day!

The soundstage on the MK4 is incredible. It is bigger than the 30RDT SE but has much more ambience in it. You can nearly feel the temperature of the recording environment:) But yes, it is that real and even has a ‘life’ of its own.
Kick drums have the SLAM but you also hear much more mid-band from the kick drum. You hear the skin, hammer and felt thumping through your body.
The whole bass region is quite an eye opener as you realise just how much recorded bass instruments have ‘sounds’ or harmonics in the mid-band upwards.
The mid and higher frequencies are amazing with a clarity that is beyond hifi superlatives. It’s because of the overall clarity of the MK4 that all LPs sound so real.
I don’t have a hifi system anymore but a ‘music playback system’.

Back to Kate Bush. I love this LP as it reminds me of an ex-girlfriend. (just hope my wife doesn’t read this). She loved this LP and bought it on cassette while she was living in Italy. Kate’s voice using the MK4 has got to be the single most moving experience in the history of my audio system. I could have kissed here, she was right there, solid in this expanse of a soundstage. She did not move at all but we all notice when she did move off mic as you could hear what sounded like her clothing rustle.
Barry and Gary at this stage were just ‘gob-smacked’. They know my system and thought the 30RDT Special Edition was excellent. The best was yet to come.

So, flicking through the LPs on offer we played a track from the Oscar Peterson Affinity LP. It’s MONO but excellent. The PS.30RDT Special Edition with its superb channel balance and resolving power played this brilliantly UNTIL the MK4 went on. You want to hear Oscar play with Soul, check out the MK4! OMG Barry had tears in his eyes. Oscars piano playing was tremendous, soulful and with a pace that was so real. Did it sound like MONO – NO! It had dimension, space and reality with that power and SLAM. You could hear the delicacy in his arthritic fingers as he soulfully glided over the keyboard. The Raven never sounded so good.

What a pleasure owning the MK4. My best piece of kit EVER. Why? Because do the math. The Raven One is about 90% of the AC so TW says. So you get a Raven One and save the rest to get a MC REF V MK4. It’s going to be MUCH better than getting a Raven AC with ANY top flight phono stage.
There must come a point in a system that the phono stage is just holding things back. I think it is earlier than most people think. I don’t think that it’s necessary to go to a Raven AC or equivalent. I now think it would be better sonically to get a very good $5000 table and a far better phono stage.

Are Barry and Gary sold on the idea? Yes but the current funding options are limited for them at present. Barry will be the first to move to the MK4 I reckon. It is that staggering and with its ability to show you just what is on your LP collection, I would only recommend it to anyone that listens to music and not background ‘sounds’. The MK4 takes no prisoners. It’s highly detailed in a real musical sense, ULTRA dynamic with SLAM like nothing else I have auditioned near or above this level. It’s extremely quiet, quieter than the Boulder 1008 by a large margin enabling you to hear so much more into the music and being all discrete Class-A gets nice and warm.