M3si - Design and Build

The M3si uses Musical Fidelity’s exclusive SMD layout techniques.  This reduced the circuit’s footprint on the large PCB and gave us greatly increased flexibility with the layout and the ability to add more inputs and, importantly, power amp power supply capacitance.  Now there is a pair of big power supply capacitors for each channel.  Power is a generous 90 wpc.

The new M3si now delivers a healthy 90 wpc.  Distortion at 1 kHz is very low at 0.007%.  Even at 10 kHz it is hovering around 0.01%.  Most hi-fi amplifiers have a huge increase of distortion with rising frequency.  To us this shows that the whole circuit design/layout concept is not good enough.  The M3si’s very low HF distortion proves that the layout circuit and circuit design are operating in perfect harmony so that there is low distortion at HF.  We believe this validates the performance and integrity of the whole design.

Signal noise ratio has been improved by more than 3dB.  This is a significant step which allows more music to be heard with a greater dynamic range.

Channel separation is excellent. 

The MM phono stage is high performance.  It has very accurate RIAA equalisation, within ± 0.5dB from 20 Hz to 20 kHz.  The accuracy is maintained out to 50 kHz.  Noise ratio is an outstanding 88dB down.  Distortion is less than 0.3%.  The M3si’s phono stage offers potential of great MM performance.

The 24 bit 96 kHz asynchronous USB input uses exactly the same circuitry and technology as our highly regarded V-Links and other top quality computer interfaces.  Jitter is virtually eliminated.   Noise is incredibly low and distortion virtually non-existent. The M3si’s USB input is capable of dredging the finest details from the computer source.