Accuphase or Musical fidelity for Focal Micro Be


I have a Musical Fidelity A5 combo (cd player and integrated amp) driving a pair of Focal Micro Utopia Be augmented with a REL Stentor 3 subwoofer. The A5 combo is a good match for the Focals, the system is very musical, with good details, and never fatigue.

Recently, a dealer offer me the chance to upgrade my A5 combo to a Musical fidelity Nu Vista combo, i.e. M3 integrated amp and the 3D cd player.

At the same time, I have been offered a very good deal on a Accuphase system, i.e. the E-408 integrated and the DP-67 cd player.

The Accuphase route should be about 1000 euros more expensive (assuming that eventually I will be able to get a decent price for the A5 combo). However, as I am after the best sound this is not really an issue.

Since it is quite difficult to listen these electronics on my speakers I would really appreciate any feedback from people that had experience with these electronics.

I thank you in advance.
nvp
Congratulation.
I have been in the same dilemma, choosing between the Accuphase 450 and the new 560, to drive Focal Electra 936.
In my experience, Accuphase and Focal go together very well.
I was worried about the ability of the new 560 to drive the speakers and future Focal scalas :). so I bought the 450.
Boy, after 50 hours of break in (the first 30 hours were horrid), this is a really great amp - a substantial improvement over the Accu. 213 I had.
I am sure the 550 is more refined.
Do you think the 550 has enough power to drive big speakers in big rooms?
Congratulation to you too Itzoros.

From my experience so far with the E-550 amp, whether or not the E-560 has enough power to drive your speakers depends mostly on the type of music you are listening and on how loud you like to listen to your music. I have found that the E-550 amp never run out of steam when playing rock music, e.g. Metallica, Dream Theatre, Rush, etc.. For some reason this music is recorded much louder than the rest of the music. When listening such music, I find the sound level to be good to almost loud when the meter indicators of my E-550 are around -30 dB (at -20 dB the music is way to loud). Clearly, as this music has almost no dynamic variations, the E-550 will never run out of steam. However, when listening to orchestra music the E-550 can run out of power. In my room, for good levels when listening to orchestra music the meters indicators should be around -20 dB, i.e. you will have 20 dB for dynamic variation, which should be enough in most of the cases. However, this will not be the case anymore if you want to listen at louder volumes.

I should also mentioned that in my experience the room size is not the most important factor. For example, in the dealers room I was able to make the E-550 (driving my Focal Micro Be) to clip by playing Loreen McKennitt (!). That is, the meter indicators went into the red area (above 0 dB) for fractions of a second, when Loreena was rising her voice while her entire band was playing. The dealer's room is approximatively 4.5 x 3.5 meters. At home, on the other hand, were I use the Micro Be speakers together with a REL Stentor 3, this has never happened. My room is 4 x 7 meters and I am listening along the smaller side. I should mentioned that in the dealer's room I was sitting further from the speakers than I do at home, i.e. 3 vs. 2.5 meters.

Finally, I should also tell you that in the dealer's room I have compared my Micros to the Wilson Sophia 2. On paper the Sophias have the same efficiency as the Micros, i.e. 89dB. The E-550 had absolutely no problem to drive the Sophias, the room was filled with well controlled and very low bass. Also, when driving the Sophias clipping did not occur earlier then it did when driving the Micros. However, the E-550 became hotter. Thus, since on paper your future speakers are more efficient than the Sophias. i.e. 92 vs 89 dB, I would say that the E-550\560 amp should have no problem driving them. But, as one can never be sure do not go for the E-560 without actually driving the Scalas with it.

Hope this has helped.
My current speakers are Focal Electra 936 which are 92 DB and go down as low as 2 Ohms (according to unofficial information gave me from Focal ).
I think the major problem for an amp. is the speaker load rather than their efficiency.
With the E 450 I hardly pass the 1 Watt mark in a room size 6 X 7 meters, and the sound is very powerful and big in all kinds of music and the only limitation is the room acoustic.
Since I like the sound of big speakers. I was really worried about the ability of 30W amp to drive those kind of speakers with ease.
Your description of the E550 go out of steam with Loreena McKennitt ( which is one of my first favorite), maybe proved I was right, because when I listening to Mummers Dance or Greensleeves (where she really shouts) the E 450 just cruise around 1 watt and the sound is very loud and relaxed.
I am almost sure the E 560 sounds more refined and controls the bass better than the E450.
The M3 is a great amp, but it gets distortion issues when the selector volume pots get dirty. There's only one guy who services them in the country.

On the other hand, the thing is built like a tank and sounds wonderful. A once every ten-year clean and tune is a small price to pay on this amp.

Hello everyone,

Finally, I have found some time to tell you about the auditions I have made before buying the Accuphase E-550 and DP-500 combo.

Firstly, I have listen to a Lyngdorf TDAI 2200 amp. The dealer brought the amp to my home and also set up the room correction system. I have used my Musical Fidelity A5 cd player as a transporter feeding the Lyngdorf DAC via the optical output of the A5. The dealer left me the amp for four days. Overall this was quite a bad experience. I will not go into details about this as this thread is not about Lyngdorf. However, if some of you want more details about this let me know and I will elaborate. I should say that I was verry surprised to obtained such bad results. Before asking the dealer to bring the Lyngdorf to my home I have listen the Lyngdorf driving the Diablo Utopia in his show room. The combination was superb. Probably, the dealer has messed things up when setting up the room correction system. Because of this bad experience I have decided that it is safer to stick to Musical Fidelity. This is how I have become interested in the NuVista M3 amp. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I was not able to audition the M3 amp driving the Micro Be speaker. The dealer that was selling the M3 was too far from where I live. Stan and Grimace, thank you for posting your thoughts regarding the M3 amp.

Secondly, I have listen the Accuphase E-350/DP-400 combo driving my Micro Be speakers in a dealer room. I went to the dealer also with my Musical Fidelity A5 combo so I could do a direct comparison. I have compared the two combos for about 4-5 hours. As you can all imagine the Accuphase combo did everything better than the Musical Fidelity A5 combo. The sound was more open and faster, and all the small little details in the music were more obvious. The music played via the Accuphase was more in the room (surrounding me) and better focused, e.g. on "The Dali CD vol. 2" I could "follow" Josefine Cronhold's mouse movements while she was singing "In your wild garden". Of course, all the details that were brought to my attention by the Accuphase combo could also be heard on the A5 combo. However, they were further in the background. This gave the Musical Fidelity combo a more softer/warmer, relaxed and less involving presentation, i.e. the music sounded like it was played not in front of the listener but a bit further away.

While comparing the A5 combo with the E-350/DP-400 combo I have also interchanged the two cd players. Interestingly, it turn out that the DP-400 cd player in combination with the A5 integrated sounded very close in character to the E-350/DP-400 combo (but had more power). This has clearly showed me how good an integrated amplifier the Musical Fidelity A5 is. On the other hand, the A5 cd player and the E-350 integrated sounded very close to the A5 combo. This was the first time I have hear a cd player completely changing the sound of an amp/speaker system. At first I was very surprised, however, after thinking more about this I have realized that the warm and relaxed characteristics of the A5 combo are often associated to tubes. As the A5 cd player is a tube player things started to make more sense.

After this comparison, I was quite sure that eventually I will buy and Accuphase combo for my Focal Utopia Micro Be speakers. The sound was superb and the attention to details was second to none. However, I was a bit reluctant to spent for the Accuphase E-350/DP-400 combo more than 3 times the price I have paid for the Musical Fidelity A5 combo. This dilemma was quite well captured by the "philosophy" of the two manufactures. Accuphase is a luxurious company that pays attention to the smallest detail, whereas Musical Fidelity is a company that makes "budget" products that can compete well with the big names (although not exactly in the same league). Eventually, I have decided to look at second hand Accuphase units, i.e. the same dealer had a E-408 amp in stock and I was able to find a DP-68 cd player at a different dealer.

As the post has gotten very long I will share with you the rest of my adventure, i.e. the comparisons between the E-408, E-450, E-550 amps (and also and Ayer amp), in a second post. I hope you have enjoy my story so far. Please do not hesitate to share your thoughts.

Regards wishes,