Home office bang for buck amp - Musical Fidelity Merlin or Yamaha WXA-50


Hi all.

I'm currently setting up a home office room and am in need of a small amplifier to power an pair of Dynaudio Audience 42s to act as some monitor/computer speakers.

I've largely narrowed the choice down to either a used Musical Fidelity Merlin amplifier or a Yamaha WXA-50.

Superficially both look very similar in terms of power output / input output etc.

I plan to run audio from my computer to the amp over optical/toslink (both amps seem happy to accept 24bit/192kHz).

Broadly speaking people seem to speak highly of the WXA-50.  Apparently it uses uses an ICEpower 125ASX2 and just generally everyone seems happy with it.

The only downside I see is that it lacks a headphone output.  Not strictly a deal-breaker for me as I don't listen to cabled headphones but the option would be nice.

 

The Merlin is curious as I cannot find much in the way of good information on it. There's a couple of articles around but they read a bit like advertorials.

From what I can tell it's essentially a V90-AMP with some extra features - and it is typically sold with some strange-looking elliptical speakers.

The V90-AMP itself seems to have some mixed opinions - but I'm unsure if issues raised are present in the Merlin and/or whether people are comparing the amp to other full-price MF gear over its price-point peers.

 

Does anyone have any insight here?

Am I crazy to try running 4ohm 86dB Dynaudio speakers from a diminutive Class-D amp?

Between the two, I'm probably leaning a little towards the Yamaha WXA-50 but happy to be warned off.

 

-James

jdrgale

The Yamaha has an entire ecosystem of muti room streaming products.

This is true, but I have no use for wireless streaming.

I was just curious if anyone had compared these amps before.

 

I’ve just purchased one of each used and I’ll do some testing and see which I prefer. I’ll even take the top off the Merlin and try to work out what class D amp it uses as I couldn’t find that info anywhere.

Will update when I have more info.