MUSICAL FIDELITY M6scd

MJ22.04.2022

Digital sources

In digital, Musical Fidelity made its name with their Nu-Vista 3D compact disc player. It was twenty years ago, at the time when CD ruled the world and SACD seemed to explode. Fast forward by two decades and most producers have dropped the CD format completely, and to find a good player is getting harder and harder. Still, there are many of us with the boxes and shelves full of discs, so the devices like the M6scd may be a blessing.

Function and form

82%

Ease of use

73%

Sound

95%

Appearance

Musical Fidelity, as a brand, is a part of Audio Tuning Group, the owners of Pro-Ject and Rekkord among others. Its goal is to market high-performing hi-fi at affordable prices, and the M6scd player is a great example of this philosophy.

The player looks very serious, with fined side panels contributing to the rugged look. The craftmanship is superb and the unit is assembled with hair-line precision, as if it was made in Japan. The good impression continues at the back, with the connectors neatly arranged and all the hexa-bolts carefully flushed. I remember that flagships from Pioneer, Sony, and Denon used to be built like this, as if they should have survived generations (and mostly they have).

In use the M6scd is a reliable player that reacts swiftly to the remote controller commands, reads the discs fast, and connects without any issues. However, I was a bit let down by its plasticky DVD transport. Not only was it noisy, but it happened to never stop running in the Stand-By mode. I had to force the player to its Off mode to stop the disc rotating. Interestingly this was not an issue during the standard operation – if I pushed STOP button the transport stopped. I suspect there is a software bug in the OEM solution, the Mark Levinson No.5101 player uses a similar mechanism and behaves the same. On the other hand, there are many functions on M6scd´s remote controller that I miss with other players nowadays, like track programming or A<>B repeat. For me, as a reviewer, the latter is priceless.

Bass management

Weight

Slam

Articulation

Leaving aside the aforementioned mechanical misbehaving, Musical Fidelity is a joy to listen to. The M6scd can nicely extract the sounds encoded on the media and it is a very detailed performer. At the same time, the sound is accurate, open and articulate. With cheaper players (and the M6scd is cheap by today´s standards) I usually struggle as they often soften transients, have varying degrees of veiling, or play with tinny and sterile sound. Not here, the sound has a very lively punch, the kind of punchy energy that we love so much at live gigs, and which is very difficult to achieve in home conditions. This impression is accentuated by the excellent bass, which may not be a champion in overall depth, but it is very solid and energetic - a pretty exceptional phenomenon in any category. The Hammond organ and bass work against a backdrop of gorgeous sounding cymbals in the jazzy Blue Opus 3 number (Oehman-Gustavson-Vinding-Dahlberg, The Hammond Connection, Opus 3) were clearly awesome via the Musical Fidelity.

Clarity & delicacy

Detail

Air

Transparency

Compared to my reference SACD player, the Accuphase DP-720, the M6scd lacked subtlety and insights into decay of notes, it has less refined front-to-back layering and its resolution was grainier, but the Accuphase seemed a tad restrained at times compared to the M6scd; the M6scd was all about rhythm and thrilling drive, and I felt like dancing, not sitting down, while listening to it. This aspect of it is really hilarious. Listening to close-miked Kenny Davern's (This Swedish Jazz Kings) clarinet was like listening to a very good horn speakers - you know, the sound is not hold back, it just blasts out of the speakers at you, and you can hear it especially with the brass and winds. With the Musical Fidelity M6scd the sound was released from the speakers lightning fast, more lightning fast than before, and the microphone capsule seemed to be inserted even deeper into the clarinet’s bell – I could hear every nuance of the sound very clearly.

Tonal accuracy

Timbre

Dynamics

Temporal resolution

And it wasn't just jazz that transported me into the room with the musicians. Billy Gibbons' cutting electric blues My Baby She Rocks (The Big Bad Blues, Concord) with its dirty guitar was mind-blowing through the M6scd. I don't think I've ever heard so much unrelenting energy and animalistic detail flowing from this song through any digital source. Reflecting on that sound, it seems to me that the Musical Fidelity is voiced much like analog, with an emphasis on mids, slightly compressed dynamics and physicality of the bottom end. If it's so much fun, why not?

The M6scd's connectivity is good, and in addition to analogue outputs (RCA and XLR) and digital outputs (optical and coax), you can send digital signals to its DAC (32-bit Delta-Sigma ESS Sabre chips) via dual RCA coax S/PDIF (32 -192kHz, 16-24 bit PCM), dual optical Toslink (32-96kHz, 16-24 bit PCM) and via asynchronous USB-B (24-bit/96kHz). The only missing standard is AES-EBU, but this is not a complaint as the M6scd is not a dedicated DAC. That the M6scd limitations lie in its transport became clear when I routed the signal from an external transport to the M6scd’s digital inputs. The sound became 'an audiophile way' softer, calmer, and more refined, and in the acoustic La Serenissima (Loreena McKennit) the soundstage was beautifully reconstructed including the depth, followed by enhanced color palette. I paid for the objectively greater sophistication with the loss of that energy and verve – now, although high-end, the sound was a bit less engaging. By contrast, the USB, where I expected the best performance, disappointed with flattened soundstage and softened bass.

Spatial resolution

Holography

Soundstage width

Soundstage depth

My summary will be chameleonic like the Musical Fidelity M6scd itself: it is actually two sounds in one. One can either enthuse on its audiophile qualities when the M6scd is used as a DAC (and you don't need anything expensive to do that, even with the cheap XDuoo digital transport via the Toslink input the sound was excellent), or have it as a full-fledged CD player that floods the room with energy. The best part is that you can switch between these two manifestations at will, depending on genre or mood. As far as the sound is concerned, the Musical Fidelity M6scd is certainly one of the remarkable digital players out there.

Price as reviewed:69 000,- Kč

Recommended resellers

Perfect Sound Group, Praha, tel. +420 722 960 690

Manufacturer's website: http://www.musicalfidelity.com

Associated components

Sources: xDuoo XT10T II, Accuphase DP-720
Amplifiers: Accuphase E-5000, TAD M2500
Interconnects and speaker cables: AAI Maestoso, InAkustik Toslink, Nordost Frey, Krautwire Max, Krautwire Numeric Digital
Loudspeakers: Fyne Audio F501, F500SP, F1-5, TAD Evolution One
Power conditioning: Nordost Qb8, Nordost Valhalla V2, IsoTek Extreme, AAI Maestoso

Gallery

77%

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