I first met Musical Fidelity’s founder, Antony Michaelson, in 1978, when he was running tube amplifier manufacturer Michaelson & Austin. I still have an M&A TVA-10 amplifier, which was designed by the late, great Tim de Paravicini.1 Soon after Antony founded Musical Fidelity in 1982, he employed de Paravicini to design the A1 integrated amplifier.2
The A1 was a slim solid state design with a class-A output stage that output 20Wpc into 8 ohms. By contrast, the massive, dual-mono Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista 800 integrated amplifier, which Michael Fremer reviewed for Stereophile in November 2015,3 featured nuvistor tubes for its small-signal circuitry, coupled with a solid state, class-AB output stage that could deliver 330Wpc into 8 ohms.
In 2017, Michaelson decided to retire. In May 2018, the Musical Fidelity brand and its intellectual property were acquired by Heinz Lichtenegger of Austrian company Audio Tuning. (Lichtenegger is the owner of Pro-Ject Audio Systems.)
The New Nu-Vista 800.2
When the original Nu-Vista 800’s “retro-look,” front-panel green-LED display was discontinued, rather than discontinue the amplifier, Musical Fidelity decided to substitute a new front panel with a larger display. They took advantage of the opportunity to make some other changes: New, rewound power transformers—one for each channel in this dual-mono design—are said to lower the noisefloor. The power supply was revised.
