Yet another new range from Musical Fidelity - and Andrew Everard finds its heavyweight amplifier hugely enjoyable. Someone ought to find Musical Fidelity's founder Antony Michaelson a new hobby, since the small matter of playing clarinet to professional standards clearly isn't enough. The man obviously has far too much time on his hands, even given the rate at which his Wembley-based company churns out new products. In the past year we've seen the arrival of the A3.2 series, the CD-PRE24 CD player and the M250 monoblocs, and now we have a new flagship line-up, in the form of the A308 series.

The reasoning behind the series is simple: Musical Fidelity didn't expect its initial Nu-Vista range to be anything more than a 'statement' exercise. After all, it had been there before, with some very exotic products under the Michaelson Audio name at the beginning of the 1990s, and these didn't exactly fly off the shelves. With the Nu-Vistas, however, the company found a ready market for high-quality, highticket hi-fl built to appeal to music lovers. This prompted some strategic moves. Its D\TD player, home cinema processor and multichannel power amp were quietly dropped, and plans to launch a Musical Fidelity SACD player were shelved. The emphasis is now on better equipment to play current discs, not those that may - or may not -prove popular in the future.

The A308 series, encompassing a CD player, integrated amplifier, preamp and power amp, sees the company following that path. It draws on those recent successes for its circuit design and internal layout, and also fits in with Michae]son's belief that there's no substitute for plenty of power used responsibly. It's something I grasped when listening to the Kelly loudspeakers the company marketed a few years back - these were high efficiency designs, and you'd expect them to sound best with simple, low-powered amps, yet they really came on song when biamped with the 50W and 200W monoblocs from MF's X-Series. Yes, this amplification set-up let them play very loud, making 'realistic' levels all too easy to achieve, but beyond that was the ease with which they delivered the music's dynamics.

For that reason the Y,1995 A308 integrated amplifier has what many will consider to be excessive power, delivering 150W into an 8ohm load, and doubling that power into 4ohms. Neither is there an shortage of current to hand, 48amps peak to peak, which ensures plenty of grip to control even the most demanding and wayward of speakers.

But while this is a big, hefty -20.5kg - unit with full remote control and good input flexibility, it's also a simple amplifier. It's built around a massive power supply and a dual mono circuit layout for optimal clarity. The purpose of the design, apart from that power, is to acriieve very low levels of distortion: Musical Fidelity claims 0.008% between 20Hz and 20kHz.

More to the point, the A308 has been designed for very low highfrequency distortion, thanks to a new circuit in which the output section has its own power supply. Thus the driver section is unaffected by the current and voltage demands of the output section, which is the part that actually powers the speakers. There are also separate transformer windings for the preamp stage, again giving better isolation so that the delicate line-level signals aren't affected by the heavyweight stuff going on further down the line.

Four line inputs are provided, along with a tape loop and a very good phono stage, switchable between moving coil and moving magnet operation. A neat touch, and one not offered by too many other manufacturers, is that the 'Aux 2' input can be switched directly to the power amplifier, bypassing the volume control. This is extremely handy if you want to use the A308 with an offboard multichannel processor, such as Yamaha's DSP-E800, to give surround sound.

The remote handset provided with the amplifier will also drive other Musical Fidelity products, such as tuners and CD players, and the speaker outputs here are provided on hefty terminals taking bare wires, spades or banana plugs - once blanking plugs have been removed. There are also preamplifier-level outputs should you wish to add a A308CR power amp to biamplify your speakers.

Performance

After a week or so of running-in, during which I listened to the amplifier occasionally but it was mainly left powered up but unconnected, the A308 was hooked up to my PMC FBi speakers using Chord Company Odyssey 4 cable, and the Marantz CD7 CD player was connected with Chord Signature interconnects. I also used my Rega Planar 2/Super Bias record player to check Out the phono performance of the amplifier, which proved to be very good indeed, and much more than a makeweight facility.

However, it was with CDs that the A308 really shone with a combination of sweetness and bass extension more suggestive of a low-powered valve amplifier than a conventional unit able to deliver massive clout. However, no valve amplifier - well, no valve amplifier available for anything near this kind of money - is capable of the huge dynamic impact with which the A308 can present a range of music.

Fast, full-blooded and with seemingly limitless extension, this amplifier manages the subtle dynamics of intimate chamber music as capably as it does big orchestral and choral pieces such as Verdi's Requiem. Play a piece like that, especially in the hugely dynamic Telarc recording (Atlanta SO / Shaw, 3/88), and the Musical Fidelity earns its keep in the first great slam of the 'Dies Irae', then it goes on to charm with finesse.

With the neighbours out and windows firmly closed, it's quite possible to play music as loud as you might want without any fear of damage to your speakers, so cleanly does the A308 drive them. This mighty amplifier also shows its worth with the classic recording of Britten's Peter Grimes, on Decca (4/86) and conducted by the composer. The drama of the 'stage' effects is evident, and the amazing quality of what is now a recording of more than 40 years vintage is quite apparent. There's a beautifully natural ambience to these discs, and via the A308 the effect is thrilling.

But I really couldn't review a Musical Fidelity amplifier without recourse to the company's own recordings, and Antony Michaelson's new disc of Brahms Clarinet Sonatas (accompanied by Ingrid Jacoby), sounds quite delightful via the CD7/A308 and FBIs. The location recording, by Tony Faulkner at Snape Maltings last September, captures the space of the Maltings as well as it does the artistry of the two performers, and whole effect is simple, direct and totally enchanting. You can buy the disc from Musical Fidelity at the number on the information panel.

But to return to the subject in hand, the A308 is another excellent product from a company that is, without a doubt, on peak form right now, and is heartily recommended to anyone who is considering a serious integrated amplifier, or indeed a comparably priced pre/power combination. Oh, and if you thought you had seen the last of Musical Fidelity's new products for this year, think again -this is the company's 20th anniversary, so on the way is a limited edition 'Tr-Vista' range to celebrate. There'll be a preamp, power amp and, lastly, that CD/SACD player.

Andrew Everard