Editorial March 2026

March 2026

Things are happening. I had a chat with Heinz Lichtenegger, the owner of Musical Fidelity who happened to be in South Africa. It just so happens that I am also listening to new old stock of mono block Musical Fidelity M100s from around ten years back that were discovered boxed in a storeroom somewhere. Life is always full of coincidences and so it was with some interest that I spent an hour or two just chatting about music in general and amplification in specifics.

There are a few issues that came up and whilst there are minor points of convenience vs quality tradeoffs, we agree that incorporating sources of digital noise and electronic radiation interference is likely to be a bad idea – this stems to powered speakers and amplified DACs.

There will always be controversy around fixing the issues that proximity causes and those of the tradeoffs of those fixes (you can’t hear them etc etc) vs avoiding having to deal with the tradeoffs entirely. My argument is that it depends – and if you are happy to settle for OK music there is absolutely nothing wrong with a powered soundbar with integrated Bluetooth and onboard DAC doing whatever it does to float your ear boat.

And I stress. Nothing.

Until you hear something better of course and then it all goes pear shaped.

I have been spending more time recently with live music than I have in some time. I have reverted to attending semi personalised concert performances in which I have no say over what it played, by whom and in what state. That’s fine. What I DO get is a very close and personal experience of a wide variety of instruments that are very real and very freaking loud. This is a reference source for me and allows me to compare what I hear on hi-fi with the real thing.

It is remarkable how close you can get. It is equally remarkable how small minor tradeoffs become amplified to the point of frustration.

I stress. If you enjoy ‘traded off’ music kit and you enjoy the music you listen to on it then that is the job done as far as I am concerned. The more people that understand, and are in tune with a universal language such as music the better and THAT is the job of music reproduction devices that can bring almost all music ever recorded directly to your ears. Even via vinyl. *ducks*.

It makes us a better species.

But it is nice to know that there is better out there and no, you do not need stupid money to get there. You do need a room but not as big as you might think and these days more easily integrated than you also might think which will keep spouses happy everywhere.

Heinz raises the point well. There’s always a musical journey in all of us somewhere and the basic rules that surround how Musical Fidelity has always approached music reproduction have not changed. It is why you will find the design done the way that they do it and if you feel there are some features such as built in DACs that are missing it, it’s because they have been designed that way specifically for specifically good reasons. The tradeoff is what you decide it is that you can live with.

And you can’t say fairer than that.

William Kelly

Publisher