Musical Fidelity’s new M6x Vinyl MM/MC phono stage is a game-changer for many reasons. It’s one of the few phono stages to feature balanced inputs. It’s one of the few that offers multiple phono inputs — three to be precise — and one of the very few multi-input phono stages that allows different loadings for each input, applying them automatically whenever a particular input is selected.
Equipment
So the M6x Vinyl’s purpose is to take the low-level signal from a turntable cartridge, either moving magnet or moving coil, and raise it to the line-level of a normal amplifier input, providing a dedicated optimised environment to do so. It’s unusual in using discrete components (individual resistors, capacitors, transistors, etc.) rather than op-amp chips. The reason, according to Heinz Lichtenegger: “Countless hours of listening tests have shown us that even the very best op-amps do not tend to be so neutral, natural, dynamic or vivid — all of which are characteristics of the Musical Fidelity sound.”
The M6x Vinyl is also unusual in offering both balanced and unbalanced inputs. This review is not the
