Magnum Dynalab MD102 Reviews...

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Quite how I ended up with this review is a moot point, but I'm more than glad I did. Magnum Dynalab makes some of the most fastidiously designed and exotic FM tuners in the world, with only a few, notably Marantz (with the legendary 10B) and Day Sequerra held in similar esteem, and I confess no real knowledge of these or other possible candidates. But I did visit Magnum at its small factory unit in Brampton Ontario, a hop, skip, and a jump to Toronto, where the MD 102 was being readied for production. What I found behind a modest retail frontage-reminiscent in some way of Niam Audio in the early 1970's-was a small, dedicated team making the finest FM tuners in the world, irrespective of cost.

The company's approach is highly conservative. Working essentially by hand, it makes only a handful of designs, including the three other tuners the MD 108, the FT-101A, and the Etude, plus the MD 208 receiver, a Virtual Surround sound decoder called the MD10, and a number of antennae and signal boosters. These include the signal sleuth, with a signal gain of up to 30dB, and the rather impressive ST-2 coil loaded indoor whip antenna, with a long captive lead which has a maximum gain according to antenna orientation, and signal polarization of 2.5dB. A sample of the ST-2 was supplied with the tuner for this test.

At the risk of boring regular readers, it is perhaps worth reprising a few points about digital and analogue tuners, and in particular the fact that, prior to DAB (now called digital radio, and which uses a digital data-reduced MPEG codec), there was no such thing as digital radio,. FM Band!! Uses frequency modulation, an analogue process that confers considerable immunity to impulsive forms of electromagnetic interference, but which remains subject to other familiar analogue failings. The only digital part of a digital FM tuner is the use of digital tuning steps, usually spaced 50kHz apart; but the system relies on signals that work in the RF band, which is difficult to separate from the audio. Stepped (digital synthesizer) tuning has earned a reputation in some quarters for always being precisely out of tune at all times, which may be the only Band II joke around-though like most of the best jokes, it includes just a grain of truth.

Magnum Dynalab claims that the best sound can only be produced when the signal received by the tuner is tuned and maintained in the analogue domain, which allows infinite resolution tuning across the band, and that the front end and the IF (intermediate frequency) amplifiers are 'precision aligned' to guarantee that all specifications are met all the time. Magnum further claims that this is impossible to achieve with a digitally tuned tuner, as these are dependant on component tolerance. Magnum also claims to be able to optimize sound quality, sensitivity and selectivity simultaneously.

The front end, and in-house design, is a sophisticated design with five tunable stages, while the precision tunable matched IF amplifier is designed to ensure consistent specification for adjacent and alternate channel separation and distortion.

Audio circuit highlights include a shielded toroidal transformer, and highly stabilized power supplies to prevent tuning drift (always a danger with analogue tuners), and 'ultra linear' power supply capacitors. The casework is aluminum and therefore non-magnetic, and output connectors are WB1 phonos and Neutrik XLRs (for balanced audio out: not tested).

The tuner front panel has a friendly, symmetrical layout, with two self-lit moving-coil meters, one of which shows centre tune and the other signal strength or multi path, according to a front panel switch setting; a large four digit display in-between shows the tuned frequency with a 100kHz resolution. The large right-hand rotary, which s well weighted, with free-running, slack-free spindle bearings, can be spun.

Though not from one end of the band to the other. The matching control on the opposite side selects one of the two aerial inputs, a facility that, with two differentially oriented directional aerials, allows weak signals to be plucked form the other, or very strong transmitters to be attenuated, without further weakening low-level signals from other directions.

The remaining front-panel switching provides two IF bandwidth settings, one of which maximizes rejection of nearby unwanted signals at the cost of slightly higher distortion at full modulation levels, and the other a normal setting which improves sound quality when reception problems don't intrude. The remaining features are inter-station muting and stereo/mono switching. Remarkably, you are not even asked to relinquish all creature comforts simply because this is not a synthesizer tuner. An optional remote control is listed (though not submitted for this test), which provides an on/off switch, remote fine tuning and five station presets. But with a tuning mechanism as efficient and as easy to use as this one, and inter-station muting selected, tuning the Magnum was almost as easy, and somehow more rewarding that selecting presets. I had expected some tuning drift over time, but it was all but undetectable here.

Sound Quality

There is a rare and special pleasure in auditioning products like these, which not only proport to be special, but actually are. The MD 102 was wired into a good system in parallel with a quality CD player (a Naim Audio CD5), and immediately impressed by performing to a standard that, was superficially at any rate, like the CD player-indeed, better according to one visitor when using material that was reasonably closely matched. (not very scientific., I know but) The Magnum has a stability and dynamic range that comes as a shock after other FM tuners, and on the worst interpretation it was musically in Naim Audio CD player territory.

To describe exactly what makes it special is not altogether straightforward. Most modern tuners sound rather like poor CD players: there is a certain stability and clarity which is reminiscent of compact disc, but little depth, weight or real underpinning to the sound, while imagery is often rather odd: usually limited in width and lacking depth. Even quite well regarded tuners somehow often sound 'shabby'.

The MD 102 is different: very different. In fact it's nothing less than stunning. This is a tuner that will breath life into the most prosaic of broadcasts, and which will invest good live broadcasts from radio 3 and 4, of music and speech alike, with an a strength amounting to boldness and a discreetness that suggests a well extended, and probably phase coherent output, image depth is well articulated, but there's plenty of left-right separation too and, for a tuner, the bass is almost uniquely firm and deep.

But it was not all just a matter of how low where the lows and how high the highs. The Magnum made music that was bigger and more progressive than with other tuners. Difficult instruments-clarinet, solo soprano for example-retained a feeling of ease of presentation at the same time as displaying a complexity in their harmonic content, the result of which was a more characterful, naturally varied sound, and for that reason a more credible one.

Conclusion

This tuner is quite unlike other FM tuners, and without a shadow of doubt musically superior to any other I have ever heard, including DAB/digital tuners, in every respect other than raw signal/noise, which with the indoor whip aerial supplied was almost but never quite inaudible on strong stations, but which with a multi-element loft antenna was close to being effectively silent with strong signals.

Mil mistuning sometimes led to a characteristic 'spitchy' peak distortion, but careful tuning acted as an effective cure, and tuning drift was not an issue.

Of course, the Magnum is also a lot of more expensive than most digital tuners, but its absolute musical superiority (given a sufficiently good aerial) provides exactly the sort of gains that are often claimed, and sometimes delivered by vinyl spinners and valve amplifiers. The day will come when FM is phased out in favor of DAB, but it doesn't look as though this will be possible at any time in the foreseeable future, despite some optimistic early claims to the contrary; and for those who care about good broadcast sound, and the wealth of superb music and speech broadcasts on FM. The MD 102 has to be the way to go if it is within budget.