Musical Fidelity Encore 225 All In One Music System

When you open the box for the Encore you are presented with an 18.3 Kg beast of a unit! This 225 watt box of musical delights is really solidly built and as such fills you with confidence even before you plug it in.

The Musical Fidelity Encore 225's purpose is to provide a one box solution designed to take away the fuss that usually entails when you take your first steps into streaming. There is no need to have a separate storage unit such as a network attached storage (NAS) drive as the Encore has its own 1TB (upgradeable) hard drive built in. You can connect the Encore to your network and you can drag and drop music onto it. Not only that, but it comes equipped with a CD drive which can work as a CD player but is also a ripper. Copying your CD collection could not be simpler, just put it in the drive and the Encore takes care of the rest. Using the Apple or Android App you then simply find your music and press play. The large high resolution display on the front panel will then show the artwork and track you are currently playing. It's not limited to playing music from the hard drive or CD though, as the Encore integrates the music subscription service Tidal through its App allowing CD quality playback from their large jukebox in the cloud. Also around the back of the unit you will find 3 pairs of RCA inputs, 4 digital inputs and a couple of USB inputs for expanding the units storage. Also on the front panel it has a high quality headphone output.

As previously mentioned the Encore has 225 watts per channel plenty enough for the vast majority of speakers out there and enough to always keep things under control. We have tried it on a number of different speaker makes and models including Dynaudio, Neat, Bowers and Wilkins, PMC and it worked well with all of them so it's certainly not a fussy amplifier. We also tried a variety of music genres. Playing Antonin Dvorak Op. 77 Scherzo performed by the Berlin Philharmonic String Quartet showed just how much grip on the speakers the amplifier has as the dynamics of the performance shone from the first bar onwards. Tippers Gulch from his Backwards Forwards album memorised with the scale of the sound stage and again this showed the amplifiers control as the speakers didn't trip up once as the sounds in the track twisted and turned. It not all about power though, as the Encore is really good at resolving the detail. On Agnes Obel's Aventine you could hear every last nuance in her voice and the strings giving the impression the artists were in the room with you. All in all we think the Encore is a great sounding product and perfect for the modern ways of music consumption. The Encore 225 offers a lot of product for the money. Of course you can come and hear it for yourself, Just give us a call for a demonstration on 0117 926 4975.

Thanks for looking.

Martin, Max and James. Audio T Bristol 

Musical Fidelity Hi-Fi products are available from the following branches of Audio T:
Brentwood, Bristol, Cardiff, Cheltenham, Enfield, Manchester, Online, Southampton, Swansea, Swindon

Musical Fidelity Encore 225 Music Streamer Offers Stunning One-Box Simplicity

After last month's introduction to Musical Fidelity at Brentwood, here is a more in depth look at one of the stars of their range the Encore 225 Music Streaming System

This beautifully built machine is a complete system in one box. The Encore 225 comprises an amplifier with the same power amplifiers as the Musical Fidelity M6si integrated, and CD drive which can rip your discs to internal storage (1TB and 2TB versions are available). It can also play CDs, has a host of inputs for external devices, can access Internet radio and Tidal and can even be seen as a network storage device by other products such as Sonos!

The build quality is exceptional with  very solid casework edged with heatsinks which are necessary as this baby runs weighted very much into class A.

The Encore 225 has a beautiful high resolution display which will show your album artwork as it plays.

In its simplest form just pop in a CD which it will rip automatically to internal storage in a high quality file, go to "my music" and playback from the usual sorted list, but it can do so much more, acting as a digital and analogue hub with enough inputs to satisfy most people.

So what does the Encore 225 sound like? Put simply it is just superb!

Seen here with the Dali Opticon 5 floorstanders it is currently filling our dem room with a big, warm, detailed and expansive sound, full of rhythm and music whether you're listening to the Bruckner Motets or the latest album from Deadmau5. We've been loading ours up with music and playing with the control features, both from the front buttons and the dedicated app and it has been a delight to use.

This one definitely has the Boswell seal of approval!

So in conclusion the Musical Fidelity Encore 225 is a gem of a system, all in one box and a breeze to use!

And there's more......

At the moment Musical Fidelity are offering a trade in for a limited time, where you will get the cost of your old Musical Fidelity amplifier (up to £1550) off the Encore 225 which is a great deal!

Come and have a listen!

Paul Francis Jason and Boswell

Musical Fidelity Hi-Fi products are also available from the following branches of Audio T:
Brentwood, Bristol, Cardiff, Cheltenham, Enfield, Manchester, Online, Southampton, Swansea, 
Swindon

Musical Fidelity And Dali Making Beautiful Music Together

We have two Hi-Fi brands which are new to the shop this month Musical Fidelity electronics and Dali loudspeakers. As we have found, they are capable of making beautiful music together.

An array of Dali speakers and Musical Fidelity electronics.

Musical Fidelity is a well established British Hi-Fi company who have been exciting and innovating for many years.

Shown here are the M3si integrated amp, the M3s CD player and the M6si integrated. The M6s CD player will follow soon. All of these components follow the Musical Fidelity ethos of making accurate, but exciting music.

We're also having a lot of fun exploring the M6 Encore 225

Encore 225

This amazing one box system is a music store, CD player, streamer, and amplifier all in one incredibly intuitive and easy to use package. It sounds wonderful too!

Dali are a Danish loudspeaker manufacturer who have been going for over 30 years producing everything from budget to high end speakers. We're still discovering what these can do but we have representatives from the Spektor, Zensor and Opticon ranges plus the beautiful little Menuets and the rather stylish Katch portable bluetooth speaker.

So far we've been throwing all sorts of music at the various pairings, the M3 components with the Opticons loved the new Anathema album "The Optimist" (check it out if you like intelligent melodic rock) 

Both brands seem to major on creating large believable soundstages; a recording of the Tallis Scholars singing Tallis anthems filled the room with the sense of a cathedral, while the perennial "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd was huge!

We'll report more as we get to know these components, but suffice to say we're excited and looking forward to the discovery. Why not come and have a listen yourself?

And finally all components in this blog have the Boswell seal of approval!

Musical Fidelity Hi-Fi products are also available from the following branches of Audio T:
Brentwood, Bristol, Cardiff, Cheltenham, Enfield, Manchester, Online, Southampton, Swansea, 
Swindon

Musical Fidelity M6 Encore 225 Streaming/CD System Has Arrived At Audio T Swindon

We have just received the Musical Fidelity M6 Encore 225 all-In-one music system and it is a brilliant Hi-Fi product. It has a built-in CD player that also acts as a CD ripper (recorder).

It comes shipped with either a 1TB (about 2500 CD's) or 2TB hard drive and if that's not enough storage space, you can fit your own 2,5" HDD or we can fit it for you. The M6 Encore 225 is available in black or silver .

WHAT'S IN THE BOX?

The M6 Encore 225 Music System is supplied with a remote control, power cable, a network cable and a start-up guide. There are many tutorials on Musical Fidelity's website about how to use it and what it can do.

All you have to do is connect the Encore 225 to your network via a network cable (ethernet cable), connect up your speakers and then power it on - that's it.

This is a standalone music system with a built-in amplifier of 225W per channel. It has a CD player, CD-ripper, Internet radio, and a built in streamer which can stream up to 32bit/384kHz. If you would like to play a CD, press the home button on the front. You can set the CD to copy the music to the built-in hard drive so that you can stream it.

Music is stored and played back from the Encore's own built in hard drive. Music is easily imported from a network drive, usb drive or a computer. It is very easy to use and we are happy to show you how it works. The reason why Musical Fidelity wants all music to be stored on the internal hard drive is for speed of playback. It also reduces the chance of common network drop-outs and it means that there are no delays when playing a track or an album - I mean access is superfast. You can skip through the songs or fast forward with no delays.

It has analogue inputs, so you can connect a turntable with an external phono stage/amplifier; digital optical and usb. It is really versatile and it very easy to use. An additional bonus is that the music stored on the M6 Encore 225 can be accessed from existing UPNP music players in the house.

The Musical Fidelity Encore has a control app is free to download for both Apple iOS and Android.

Also available is Internet radio and Tidal (music streaming service).

The Encore can be controlled via the supplied remote control, the front buttons or via iOS and Android app. All information is displayed on the front colour display. As with all network products there are software updates to deal with but again thanks to Musical Fidelity, this is be done automatically over the network.

WHAT DOES IT SOUND LIKE?
We think it sounds fantastic and it will certainly drive most speakers easily. We connected the Musical Fidelity M6 Encore 225 to our Martin Logan EM-ESL that we have recently received (more about them in our next blog) and we were blown away with the resulting sound.

There is absolutely nothing we don't like about this music system. Please come in and have a listen and you are more then welcome to bring your own CD's to listen to and you can then compare the CD transport with the sound of a ripped and streamed CD. 

We look forward to seeing you - Stefan & Andy.

Musical Fidelity home audio and Hi-Fi products are available from the following branches of Audio T: 
Brentwood, Bristol, Cardiff, Cheltenham, Enfield, Manchester, Online, Southampton, Swansea