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TITAN Power Amplifier
Monster amplifiers such as the TITAN have always featured in Musical Fidelity’s product lineup, delivering to the true hi-fi enthusiast unbeatable value-for-money combined with sensational visuals and performance.
The longevity of the aesthetics for the new era TITAN has gone on to influence Musical Fidelity’s output fro its high-end Nu-Vista products to this day.
‘I can’t imagine anyone hearing the Titan and not loving it’, was the conclusion of Michael Fremer’s Stereophile review.
HI-FI News: ‘Never have we heard a traditional amp which does everything quite so well.’
Titan Sketch
One of many original marker renderings that endeared Musical Fidelity to Equinox Partners.
Hand-sketching captures the immediacy of a design concept that the somewhat sterile 3D realistic render from AutoCAD cannot possibly capture.
We have done so many and, being hand drawn, our client flatters us by framing them and have them hanging on the walls of their offices!
Indeed, 3D rendering from AutoCAD can be misleading. The visuals can be so perfect, so shiny, so free of blemishes, that products can be expensively signed off without prototyping or trial production.
PRIMO Preamplifier
In 2009, the PRIMO style of amplifier heralded the introduction of a new era of amplifiers, CD players and other devices from Musical Fidelity.
The external design features chunky all-steel chassis and anodised aluminium front panel, highlighted by the stainless steel etched badge-work and inserts and remains a mainstay of the visuals for Musical Fidelity’s M-Series products to this day.
Technically, they display Musical Fidelity’s classic electronic wizardry to produce a high quality sound that regularly top the ‘Best-Buy’ lists in the audiophile magazines.
PRIMO Preamplifier Render
I felt that a new direction need to be taken with the product badging being the clearest ident, with ‘by Musical Fidelity’ as part of the traditional front panel print.
OK, so I had to do it. Sketching apart, I had to render the front elevations in Adobe Illustrator, using Peter Howard’s CAD files, that show the PRIMO’s options in the best light.
The titanium finish was a gorgeous option that highlighted the stainless steel badgework.
F-15 Power Amplifier
In 1993, this distant forerunner of the Titan represented a radical departure from traditional, brutalist, machined enclosures that MF was usually producing, into the use of sculptural, interlocking aluminium extrusions and sexily curving heat-sinks.
It astonished renowned hi-fi critic, Ken Kessler, who described the appearance as ‘…quite simply, about as elegant as any hardware I can name.’
Although, initially, the F-15 power amplifier and its companion F-22 pre-amplifier, faced comments from the hi-fi cognoscenti for being ‘too pretty’, the F-Series went on to pioneer a range of tube hybrid amplifier products that featured the ‘warm’ sound of a valve-based traditional amplifier with the added benefit of reliable electronics.
And imitation is the sincerest form of flattery – Musical Fidelity’s Technical Director, Richard Ansell, on a trip to Hong Kong, spotted a direct copy of the F-15, although it certainly didn’t feature MF’s classic electronics.
F-22 pre-amplifier
Reflecting the radical departure in casework design of it’s companion F-15 Power amplifier, the F-Series went on to pioneer a range of classic Musical Fidelity tube hybrid amplifier products that featured the ‘warm’ sound of a valve-based traditional amplifier with the benefit of reliable electronics.
The products’ fans still have their amplifiers regularly returned to Musical Fidelity for reconditioning and upgrading.
The X-Series
A legend in Musical Fidelity’s design history. The lozenge shaped, one-piece aluminium extrusion provides a simple enclosure for a stackable family of hi-fi products.
Originally conceived as a range of tubular-shaped components – it featured in-line boosters and line conditioners, as well as an individual headphone amplifier and a digital-to-analogue convertor.
All the products featured aluminium’s heat-dissipating properties, as well as the profiles providing integral mountings for the circuit boards and other mechanical fixing points.
It was a logical development to expand the casework, and the product range, to produce a variety of amplifiers, a tuner and a CD player in a stackable mini-component format.
Although over 25 years old now, the products are regularly featured on auction sites as design classics commanding premium prices!
Headphones
Two major Swiss watch manufacturers asked Musical Fidelity to generate concepts for re-branding the MF-100 headphones. These would be handed out as gifts at the Autumn ‘Watches & Wonders’ fair in Hong Kong. http://youtu.be/qFDZHI4Ft3E
http://www.musicalfidelity.com/ to view where you can buy your pair of these outstanding headphones.
Watches & Headphones
A range of alternative concepts for Musical Fidelity to brand their MF-100 headphones for Swiss Jeweller, Chopard. A variety of alternatives were presented representing Chopard and their sub-brands, Happy Sport for Women and LUC for Chopard’s classic customer.
On-going miniaturisation of electronics has meant that devices have become smaller over the years, Musical Fidelity asked Equinox Partners to generate concepts for these hanging blister packs.
In a departure from normal cardboard packaging, Equinox Partners created the graphics and final artworks for both the packaging and the range of seven hi-fi ‘line conditioner’ products.
A5 Series
Introduced as an antidote to the elegant F-Series, deemed too ‘pretty’ and ‘feminine’ in appearance, the A5 was a response to the feed-back to Musical Fidelity’s owner, Antony Michaelson, by dealers and the magazine-reading, armchair cognoscenti.
Apparently there was a need for a more brutal, macho range of amps and CD players, so by 2005 the new A5 range heralded the more angular and chunky aesthetic that continued with the kW-Series.
kW-Series
With wide and varied range of products from fully integrated amplifiers to the one-box CD/tuner/amp kW250S, Musical Fidelity fulfilled all their audiophile customers wishes.
Still featuring heavy aluminium front panels, initially the ‘handles’ that had featured on the products for so long were done away with, to be replaced by ribbed castings and chamfered off corners for the larger kW range of amps and CD players.
Chronos by Michaelson Audio!
Pure value amplifiers give outstandingly glorious sound reproduction – Chronos gave a bit more!
A left-field project by Antony Michaelson that allowed him to indulge in a bit of fantasy.
The range included Chronos, two power amplifiers controlled by a single preamp.
And Odysseus, a standalone Integrated Valve amp, capable of outperforming many, much more sophisticated pieces of equipment.
Chronos by Michaelson Audio!
The original brief was that the amps should have art-deco wings, similar to the caryatids on the Hoover Dam.
Many sketches later – and leaving MF engineers to do their worst – the Chronos (and the Odysseus Integrated amp) emerged!
(How to seriously upset someone who has just spent a fortune on a new Krell Amp – put up against an Odysseus!)
At nearly 45kg, the A370 and its bigger brother the A470, were true hi-fi heavyweights for the aficionado.
The enormous power they delivered, driving equally impressive loud speakers, could fill a room with the most delicate of controllable sound.
Designed at Roberts Weaver, with a young Jonathan Ive fresh out of college, these were the first of a series of monster amplifiers Michael has designed with Musical Fidelity.
