Magnum Dynalab MD208 Receiver Reviews...

Stereophile, Chip Stern, January, 2001: 

Musical arguments in favor of separate components are compelling and well-documented. But there's also something musical to be said about reducing the number of power sources, keeping signal paths short and direct, and hard-wiring connections between components rather than employing multiple sets of interconnects. So while a designer must inevitably confront certain tradeoffs, the explosive growth and popularity of single-box products in the past few years contradicts the received wisdom passed down by some of the more sniffy audiophiles: that such unduly proletarian products are terminally compromised in terms of absolute levels of music reproduction. 

However, the practical design constraints of integrated units don't inevitably result in draconian musical compromises. Second, in a theme that high-end manufacturers risk ignoring at their peril, many consumers aren't as anxious about cost as they are about compromising a basic lifestyle precept: KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). "I'm willing to pay for concert-hall-quality sound," they say, "but I don't want racks of gear or snake pits full of cables and interconnects. I don't want to have to futz around with all this nonsense and still not end up with real system synergy."

Thus a strategic alliance took place between two of the leading lights of the Canadian audio industry. Magnum Dynalab brought onboard the engineers of Simaudio to collaborate on a preamp/power-amp/tuner combo worthy of their FM tuner technology. In the process they created a post-modern classic worthy of the "high-end" appellation: the Magnum Dynalab MD 208 Discrete Audio Receiver. The MD 208 is as musical, sexy, and uncomplicated a performer as I've ever entertained in my listening room.

Handsome
The sleek, modern, and streamlined appearance of the ebony MD 208 is accentuated by its top, featuring the letter "M," and its concave, hardwood trim, which echoes the wavelike configuration of the metal side panels—dual heatsinks like sets of gills on either side toward the back. There's a lovely symmetry to the front panel: an illuminated digital volume readout above a set of seven steel-gray buttons with red LEDs, which, from left to right, activate what is essentially a power idle switch and the various inputs. These share the panel with several tuner functions: Mute and Stereo, BW1 and BW2 switches (which offer users a choice of normal, wide-open bandwidth or narrow, highly selective bandwidth to exclude interference from adjacent stations), and a signal switch that lets you configure the left VU meter to display signal strength or multipath.

To the left of the panel is a large manual volume control, on the right a large analog FM flywheel (above which are the Mute and Stereo LEDs). The digital volume display doubles as an input source indicator and a left-right balance control. When the tuner is activated, the two VU meters on the front panel and the display area just below the volume indicator are illuminated to indicate a digital display of the tuning frequency.

Volume up/down, Balance left/right, and Power on/off are also accessible via a beefy cast-alloy remote control—a welcome change from those ultra-cheesy plastic remotes, with their esoteric lithium batteries, The remote exerted smooth, quiet control over the digital volume potentiometer, although, oddly enough, there was a slight switching noise when switching from input A1 to A2, from A3 to A4, and from A5 to the tuner...though not from A2 to A3 or from A4 to A5, or from tuner to CD. Curious.

The front-panel power switch is not the main power control. There's a primary rocker switch on the back panel next to the IEC AC inlet. Magnum Dynalab suggests that, once the MD 208 is set up, it never be fully powered down, instead using the front-panel button to put the unit in standby.

Proceeding from right to left on the back are the left speaker terminals (above which is a 75 ohm antenna input) and a full array of high-quality, gold-plated RCA inputs and outputs, beginning with both a pre-out and a tape out (many manufacturers neglect such accoutrements), along with five line-level inputs (A1-A5), and concluding with the CD inputs and the right speaker terminals.

I was nonplused to discover, on removing the metal nut on the speaker terminals, that there was no hole in their shafts through which to thread bare speaker wires, nor a hollowed-out section in the front to fully accept a banana plug. One could employ spades, or, as I did, insert the WBT expanding banana plugs on my JPS Labs Superconductor 2 speaker cables as far as they'd go: about halfway in. I didn't notice any particular sonic anomalies from this arrangement, but I'm sure most people would favor a connection that maximized the area and gave you several setup options.

Internally, the MD 208 evinced no significant compromises in its overall layout and construction. Magnum Dynalab's president, Larry Zurowski, went so far as to assert that the new tuner section designed for the MD 208 exceeds the performance of both their entry-level FT-101A tuner (with its MOSFET front-end) and MD's popular $1500 Etude.

"We deal only in analog designs," Zurowski explained, "and the MD 208 features the three-stage front-end with special resonators that we use in our more expensive tuners. The difference is that in our standalone tuners there's an audio section handling the pure output stage: a significant audio section and a bigger one throughout. Now we take the signal right off our RF board and feed it down into the SimAudio preamp and power-amp section of the MD 208.

"The resonators are what set the front-end up. That's where it all starts, and we tune those stages for minimum distortion, plus optimum tone, resolution, selectivity, and sensitivity at three frequencies: 92.1, 100.1, and 107.3MHz...so what happens is the tuner has a very flat response across the whole frequency of FM. Many tuners will tune very well at 100MHz, but when you get down into the college stations and the art classical stations, down around 91.1 and 88.7, they've lost their range. And if a tuner isn't tuned properly for minimum distortion and maximum performance, it'll sound pretty thin.

"It's a very small increment. It's incredible, when we tune them, how a little adjustment makes such a difference with the band. But we manage to get things operating in a frequency range from 10Hz to 70.5kHz, so we give a full spectrum. This is a very sensitive, wide-open tuner. Some tuners put the emphasis on greater selectivity, but you end up with a much thinner sound; you lose the resolution, the transparency, and the definition that you get from real music—you lose the realism of the music."

Speaking on behalf of the MD 208's preamp and power stages, Simaudio's Vince Stables pointed to vacuum-pressure impregnation of its transformers as a source of the MD 208's stability. "You have a lot less eddy-current electromagnetic losses from the transformer, which results in a much quieter performance and a better regulation factor from the transformer standpoint. So you don't have filter caps and other things that will actually remove noises from the transformer and the power-supply section—there're no filter caps that will touch the signal path inside of this preamp or amplifier stage. And it employs a no-overall-feedback design, so you're handling sonic transients in real time rather than having to compensate for the backlash from the speaker. So it allows for more natural timbral accuracy...there's a single stage of feedback at the output stage of only about 6dB.

"Sim also uses 4oz copper tracings on the PC board. (Most people usually use a 2oz pure copper tracing.) It adds more gauge to the actual PC board so you can pass better dynamics through. It also has an extremely reliable volume attenuation. So it uses a fiber-optic encoder rather than a motorized potentiometer. That goes to a microprocessor that's shunted; it's basically a microprocessor with the ladder of resistors. And that shunts it off the ground plate. So at any given moment you have only a single level of resistance on the ground plate that controls volume. It makes for a very short, sweet attenuation or a volume attenuation path. And it's not very colored in terms of where you're at; all it does is add resistance to the negative point. It doesn't really depend on where your volume is set to get that sweet spot from a preamplifier, so your timbres don't shift that much as you increase or decrease volume."

Sound quality
Given the northern orientation of my listening room, my proximity to the George Washington Bridge, the iron and steel frames of the prewar buildings in my immediate neighborhood, the line-of-sight characteristics of your basic FM signal, and my apartment not allowing a proper FM antenna to be erected, I was unable to perform as thorough evaluation of the MD 208's FM tuner section as I would have liked. Looking at the MD 208's multipath meter, it was clear why my overall FM reception is horrific beyond belief, and why it's so difficult for me to pull in even the strongest local stations. Have you ever tried pointing the remote of your CD or TV at the wall opposite the unit and gotten a reflected signal that activates your source's electronic eye just as well as a direct shot? Well, that's analogous to what I experience with FM: all manner of indirect signals bounce around and vie for the main focus, so that most stations are afflicted with ghosting and all manner of grunge.

So for judging such basic attributes as stereo separation and selectivity and signal/noise ratio, I must defer to suburban guru and hardcore FM aficionado Larry Greenhill, who will offer his take on the MD 208's FM package in an upcoming issue.

As for the MD 208's integrated amplifier section, I'd never experienced a component that was so dependent on a long burn-in. People who hear the receiver in a dealer's showroom and who bring it home without a clear understanding of what is involved in its transformation from ice-cold solid-state chrysalis to fully formed musical butterfly will be disappointed. The MD 208's manual suggests that a solid 48 hours of continuous operation are necessary for the FM section to break in, but I recommend at least a month of that for the amp, and especially the preamp, to really get in sync, open up, and show their true colors. Until then, the MD 208's sound was so discombobulated that I was tempted to pack it up and ship it back.

I'm glad I didn't, but for a while I experienced the symptoms of aural indigestion: amorphous bass focus, limited bass extension, incoherent soundstaging, a lack of high-end extension, poor low-level resolution, and, most notably, a limited volume range. There seemed to be an optimal volume setting at which the MD 208 evinced a realistic, coherent tonal balance and dynamic range; below that, the presentation lacked presence, body, and tonal coherence; above it, the tonal balance seemed to go out of kilter, as everything seemed a touch too loud and glary.

Vince Stables of Simaudio concurred, and seemed to be making a mental check mark next to each symptom as I detailed them over the phone. "Yeah, it takes a long time because there's a lot of Teflon used on the internal wiring in the preamp stage, those 4oz copper tracings on the PC board take forever to burn in, and you hear it all because there's no filter caps acting as sonic Band-Aids, and no corrective feedback save at the output stage. So it's much more revealing of nuances in the burn-in process as things charge up; eg, transformers, the power-supply section. And it doesn't harmonically sound right—it sounds sort of outside the music. The soundstage starts off very small and it doesn't permit a lot of microdynamic detail. It's almost like it's one step behind the speaker. If you turn the volume up, you won't be able to play as loud because it sounds out of sync from the music. And then, after about a month or a month and a half, as it warms up, it starts to jive and everything becomes more cohesive."

When the integrated amp section of the MD 208 was finally broken in to my satisfaction, I was quite taken by its sonic presentation. On my old standby test disc, Ralph Towner and Gary Peacock's A Closer View (ECM 1602), I noticed a remarkable degree of refinement and harmonic detail in the rendering of timbres and ambient information that drew me as deep into the music as I have ever been. The MD 208 revealed an aura about Towner's nylon-string pluckings, and a timbral complexity to Peacock's majestic bass on "Opalesque," that made me sit up and take notice—there was an inviting sense of presence and acoustic realism to the presentation that was eminently vivid, without getting in my face.

While I experienced more speed and forward presence from the Linn Classik, and more rib-wrenching slam, dynamic range, and top-end extension from the Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista combo, the MD 208 certainly didn't suffer from rolled-off highs or a paucity of bass information. No, I'm talking about a style of presentation, as I discovered to my delight when exploring the immense bass pulses and stereo panning effects synthesist Malcolm Cecil (aka Tonto's Expanding Head Band) employs on "Jetsex," from Tonto Rides Again (Viceroy Vintage VIN 6036-2). There was plenty of bass information, good pacing and drive, lots of weight, and a proper sense of scale. I doubt any rock listener would feel shortchanged.

But the cumulative sonic signature of the MD 208's preamp and power sections was more about tonal purity than sheer punch. I found the MD 208 had good speed and dynamic headroom, and put out plenty of real-world juice—and with a peak current output of 30 amps and a damping factor of more than 100, it should prove more than equal to any speaker load you toss its way.

After some experimentation, I ended up using a pair of the very-low-capacitance Synergistic Research Resolution Reference Mk.II transmission-line interconnects (with Discrete Shielding) between the receiver and the Sony SCD-777ES SACD player, and toward the end of my listening evaluations was rewarded for my patience by the degree of intimacy I experienced from advance CDs by guitarist John Scofield and Modern Jazz Quartet pianist John Lewis.

Scofield's Works for Me (Verve 314 549 281-2) features, among other players, the inspired pairing of drummer Billy Higgins and bassist Christian McBride. "Heel to Toe" begins with strolling bass and drums; there's enormous air and separation between Higgins' different drums and cymbals, each individual component beautifully detailed, yet coherent as a family sound; the degree of acoustic detail in the timbral realism of McBride's bass was stunning, as was the sense of acoustic space delineating his image from the other instruments. Many systems would make his bass sound as if it was recorded direct; through the MD 208, I felt as if I was hearing the unprocessed interaction of an acoustic bass fiddle and a fine tube mike.

John Lewis's Evolution 2 (Atlantic 83313-2) takes over where the first chapter of his acclaimed audiophile trilogy left off—with as beautiful a depiction of the interactions between an acoustic piano and an acoustic space as I've ever heard on disc. It was beyond intimate—it was as if they were playing just for me. The MD 208's representation of acoustic cues and inner details was honest and effortless, and I was shocked at how far back into perfect blackness I could follow the closing chords, the tendrils of overtones and reverb trails of "December, Remember." Talk about open sesame.

Conclusions
The Magnum Dynalab MD 208 Discrete Audio Receiver is a no-compromise high-end design that I could easily live with over the long haul. Save for odd details such as the speaker terminal posts not fully accepting bananas, and once I'd broken it in to my satisfaction, I had few quibbles with it. It accommodated any number of musical styles, though it really shone on acoustic music. There was a sweetness and grace to the MD 208's laid-back style of music reproduction—smooth and refined, though not without guts and gusto.

Sometimes the midranges of solid-state amps can be a tad cool—plenty of refinement and resolution but not much character. Not the MD 208. The Magnum Dynalab's output stage mirrored its tuner's dulcet, maple-glazed character with a warm, open presentation that struck me as a happy balance between tube-like euphony and solid-state detail. I keep hearing the word "lush" when grasping for adjectives, but I don't want to suggest anything opaque about the sound: it was very clear and extended on top while adding no bite of its own.

The more I think about it, the more the MD 208 reminds me of the classic YBA Intégré integrated amplifier, which is saying a mouthful: warm and open, refined and extended, punchy and polite, the YBA gives you 50Wpc and a lovely phono stage for $2395. The MD 208 is also a high-current device, but offers double the power, remote volume, balance and input controls, and (instead of a phono stage) a world-class tuner so good it compels you to listen to FM—all for $2975. That's a lot of bang for the buck.