by aresti » Fri Mar 13, 2009 9:05 pm
Per Musical Fidelity’s Overviews (quoted from their website):
The V-Series is a new ultra-value super-performance series which offers incredible value for money. As a result of careful engineering, the V-Series has state-of-the-art, no compromise circuitry housed in a nicely finished but modest package.
Design background:
Most high-end components offer incredibly bad value. Why do we say this? Because, as crazy as it sounds, about four to five percent of the cost of good value high-end electronics is in the actual electronics that do the work. The other 95% of the cost is in the metalwork and other items that don’t contribute to sound production or sound quality. Basically, high-end is a lot of show and not much go for a huge cost.
Musical Fidelity has always tried to offer value for money. We feel that to offer grossly overpriced bling is an insult to customers – so we have turned the conventional cost-ratios on their head. By doing this, we are able to offer state-of-the-art performance at shockingly low prices.
The V-Series is the result of our iconoclasm. We have eliminated pointless metalwork, bling and packaging, and concentrated on performance. Typically, the V-Series has 60% to 70% of its cost in electronics. The quantity and quality of components in any of the V-Series is pretty well identical to those from high-end components costing ten times (or more) the price. The difference is that the V-Series is housed in nicely finished, economical metalwork as opposed to bloated high-end excess.
Once you take this approach, everything begins to fall into place.
On the V-CAN:
The V-CAN is a genuine state-of-the-art headphone amplifier. Most high quality headphones have impedance of around 30 Ohms. Almost all headphone amps have an output impedance between 50 and 100 Ohms. Because of their high output impedance they cannot drive headphones properly. Any sound they produce through the headphones is necessarily coloured, with distortion and non linear frequency response. The V-CAN is quite different. It's output impedance is 5 Ohms. This means it will drive any headphone available with ease. It will produce low distortion, ruler flat frequency response and complete linearity.
On the V-DAC:
The V-DAC is a sensational state-of-the-art DAC. By any measurement its performance is way beyond so-called state-of-the-art competition.
The V-DAC has lower noise, better linearity, ruler flat frequency response, excellent stereo separation, ultra low distortion, and incredibly low jitter
In fact overall the technical performance of the V-DAC is probably about the best in the world regardless of price. There is no trickery here. It's simply that we use state-of-the-art digital components (these are very expensive) and implement them with state-of-the-art circuitry and layout. The secret is simple; there's no ridiculous packaging, and absolutely no wastage on anything. The V-DAC is rather like an F1 racing car. It is completely funcitonal with no excess flab or wastage anywhere.
The V-DAC has inputs for Coax, Optical and USB.
On the V-LPS:
The V-LPS is a very high performance MM/MC Phono Stage. It is technically correct. It has virtually perfect RIAA (±0.3dB 20Hz - 20kHz), extremely low distortion, wide overload margin and very low noise. By every tehnical measure it is top quality.
We achieve this by putting our kW Series phono stage circuitry into a package which is extremely economical. It really isn't rocket science, all y have to do is to be determined to make incredible value for money. And that's the V-LPS!
Aresti's comments: Considering the value-for-money of MF products, of which I own 8 separate audio components, I just thought I’d share these with you.