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The Phono Stage of Your Dreams
Musical Fidelity's NuVista Vinyl phono preamp was a labor of love for Musical Fidelity. The company loves analog phono gear, adore tubes, and is passionate about the low noise, long-life Nuvistor tube that is the centerpiece of the Vinyl and contributes to its extraordinary sound. In addition to the Nuvistor tube set, the Vinyl boasts MM/MC compatibility, a huge range of cartridge loading options, a highly sophisticated power supply, and the kind of technical performance that has earned Musical Fidelity's NuVista series the highest praise from the audiophile press.
Musical Fidelity's founder and chief designer, Antony Michaelson, calls the NuVistal Vinyl "the product of our dreams," and even a glance at the gorgeous casework demonstrates the care that went into every aspect of this product. According to Antony Michaelson, "With the NuVista Vinyl, we set out to make a phono stage without any practical limits. In real life, you cannot overload its input stage or find any practical limitations in its output driving capacity."
Vinyl has both single-ended RCA and balanced XLR outputs. And for amazing flexibility, it has five inputs, each can be set independently for either MM/MC and exact loading, both resistance and capacitance. And Vinyl will remember the last-used settings for each input once you have configured them the first time.
Nuvistor "Wonder Tube"
The NuVista Vinyl phono stage is the latest entry in Musical Fidelity's critically acclaimed line of NuVista products built around the Nuvistor "wonder tube" of the 1950s. Originally developed for military use and test equipment, the miniature Nuvistor marked the apex of vacuum tube development and was engineered to compete with the earliest solid-state devices. The Nuvistor is particularly suited to hi-fi applications thanks to its low noise, long life, cool running temperature, and ultra-linear, ultra-consistent performance. Musical Fidelity is the first manufacturer to apply this tube to hi-fi design using the last remaining factory fresh Nuvistor tubes on the planet.
Sophisticated Power Supply
Any audiophile product is ultimately only as good as its power supply, and Musical Fidelity went whole hog giving the NuVista Vinyl a superlative, extremely quiet, and sophisticated power supply configuration. It consists of total of ten PSUs (power supply units), with separate PSUs provided for each channel and for each stage. The PSUs are fully balanced with perfect star grounding, and the PSU's supplying power to the Nuvistor tubes are passively filtered and regulated.
Superb Specs All the Way
With so much meticulous care put into the design and manufacture of the Vinyl, it's no surprise that one of its main characteristics is and extremely low level of distortion that is less than 0.008% across the band.
The signal-to-noise ratio is really good, too, providing -96db with moving magnet cartridges and -86dB with moving coil cartridges, and the reference 2V overload margin is better than 31 dB. If that's not enough goodness, the RIAA accuracy is +/- 0.25dB (20 Hz - 20 kHz), and the NuVista Vinyl has an additional post-RIAA passive filter that retains substantial accuracy up to and beyond 80 kHz. The maximum output is 10V RMS, 20V RMS balanced.
Lots of Configurability
You can easily configure the Vinyl to suit your phono cartridge, thanks to the number of setting options. It offers eight input resistance settings: 10R, 25R, 50R, 100R, 400R, 800R, 1k2, 47k. It offers eight capacitance settings, too: 50pf, 100pf, 150pf, 200pf, 250pf, 300pf, 350pf, 400pf. Additionally, the Vinyl includes a +6db setting for very low output cartridges and for the IEC/RIAA modification facility.
Heroic Build Quality
The NuVista Vinyl has what Antony Michaelson terms a "heroic build quality." The front panel is machined from a solid mil-spec aluminum billet. The sides are custom-made low inclusion extrusions finished in ultra fine lacquer. Each push button is machined from mi-spec aluminum, and the cover, base and back are all nonresonant. In total, the casework provides a very rigid, non-resonant enclosure that ensures the Vinyl circuitry has complete isolation.
The true test of any audio component is that you don’t know it is there. You completely forget its existence. By that criteria the NuVista Vinyl is almost perfect. It has essentially no audible noise, virtually no distortion, you cannot overload its input or output, and you can load your cartridge perfectly. In short, it has everything that you could possibly want in a phono stage… and so much more!
