Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista Owners Questions???

I had my Tri-Vista CD Player since April of this year; I bought it from Sound By Singer in New York. I was told then that it was best to just leave the unit on and that it would take anywhere from 300-500 hrs to break in. I stop hearing differences after about 300 hrs. And as if now I do keep it on all the time, and do fell it sounds best this way.

Hello:

I have had my Tri-Vista SACD since January and love it. I feel it sounds no better today than when I got it. I like it better than the Nu-Vistor CD player. I have bought and listened to several SACD titles but bought this unit for its excellent standard CD playback as the music I like isn't available on SACD.......nothing much is really available at this point but that's OK. I must say I do find the SACD DAC a bit rough in the upper mid/lo hf area. Yes I know there is more info there on this format but with the exception of the dynamic range and lower noise floor I prefer the remastered standard CD versions to the SACD ones
of the 3 Miles Davis titles I have in each format. Except for Live/Evil. Maybe because it's live and is noisy. Sometimes Miles horn is just too much in SACD and I use a tube front end/CJ Bipolar solid state amp (not brite) and textile domes in my loudspeakers. I also love the digital in feature. This allows me to take the cheap Apex DVD player and listen to DVD's through the Trivista. WOW! There are some great DVD's out there. I really like the Herbie Hancock "Future to Future". I watch movies too and yes always in 2 channel. It's just fine. I will say that the Apex has 2 interesting qualities and one problem- first the volume on the remote works in the digital out mode! This allows me to adjust the volume from my chair which I can't do w/my analog tube pre-amp. Sadly I took my 3 worst Cd's (most scratches) and the Apex reads them better. This is probably not a huge suprise. DVD optics have to do a lot more. No it doesn't sound as good as the internal transport but it's damn close. I use a $300 Kimber digital cable.The problem was even though I set the Apex player for PCM instead of bitstream for the digital out when I was watching/listening to a DVD and bumped the audio button on the Apex Remote it switched from Dolby Digital 2 CH to Dolby Digital 5.1 OK no biggy just push the button and it will switch back. Wrong! It choose the third audio option on this DVD; the DTS 5.1 which of course is bitstream and let me tell you big bad noise! Yes I selected the digital out to PCM in the setup menu. You may know that bitstream sent to a PCM decoder is just a jumble of digital noise.....well now you do. I guess the Apex just decided it was gonna do what it wanted....again big bad noise. Be careful anytime you use a DVD into a DAC that only does PCM.
OK that was off topic so I will get back on and finish. This thing is marvelous. I was stunned at the detail and image quality this piece produced. You may have heard there are 5 power supplies inside this unit w/choke regulation.One each for the SACD/Standard CD DAC's,the transport and the audio board.I never figured out the 5th....maybe the cool lighted feet. Which by the way start out RED for the first 5-8 seconds then go Amber (unit ready to accept disc/play) and then blue after about a half an hour. But there is purple for a few seconds too as the blue comes on and the amber slowly fades. I just know you needed to hear that. Finally I have sold gear for many years and am dedicated to Vynil as well but this comes pretty close. I compared it to several other players in the 2-10K range and liked this the most. A good dealer should set up a
nice demo scenario for you to evaluate it. Perhaps due to choke regulation when I plug it to my PS Audio power plant and use the 120HZ sine wave mode which makes my preamp show much more detail it makes the Trivista sound no better and it runs much hotter. I don't do that anymore. It does operate better in the power plant @60 HZ than stright from the wall socket. Oh I thought the remote could be a little more substantial. Total thumbs up is my conclusion. Go ahead and do it. If you hve a good ear you will hear the difference and remember its really stunning on standard CD playback. Thanks for reading.

ET

I ha one other question for you regardng a new amplifier. How long would it take to completely burn in a new amp out of the box? Would you need to leave it on and running with a source playing for at least a month or would it be less with an amp?

I leave it on all the time and try to play as much music through it as possible.

hope this helps,

Johnny

When you said the midrange fleshed out after about a month, did you leave your player running all the time for a month or was it on and off intermitantly? thanks

I own the Tri-Vista and I could tell the unit was going to be a keeper right out of the box. It did sound a little hard in the High Frequencies. It gradually went away over a period of two weeks. The midrange will also flesh out over about a month. Great SACD Player. It smokes a stock SCD-1, but it should.

hope this helps,

Johnny

The Tri-Vista sacd player sounds better than anything I owned. This is with less than 100 hours of use.

I'd still ask anyone at Stereophile about ANY product of Musical Fidelity, since they seem to review every product they market and with great regularity. BTW, when you come out with 'limited editions', all bets are off. That way, you can debut a 'new' product that 'needs' reviewing and do it every few months while buying really expensive advertising. Hats off to Anthony Michaelson. Who said clarinet players are dumb?

I'm sure Kevin Deal means well. I've always had good success with Upsaleaudio. It's nice that he's a dealer for Musical Fidelity.

It takes a few days of being left on to break in. The tonal balance of the Tri-Vista is different than the Nu-Vista. The Nu-Vista is darker at the top. More air with Tri-Vista. Not a good or bad thing...just a characteristic.

If you have Martin Logans or another speaker that needs "air" at the very tip-top get the Tri-Vista.

Both products will amaze you.

On the comment made above about Stereophile knowing about MF gear...they are not alone. TAS had a column talking about price/value and at one extreme spoke of Lamm as being expensive for what you get in parts count, and used Musical Fidelity as THE example of big value for the money.

In solid state I know of now other company that gives you more parts count, refined finish, and better sound for the dollar.

My Tri-Vista SACD sounded great right out of the box. I think the sound may have improved slightly after the first 100 hours or so. The extremely long break-in and warm-up periods described in the Stereophile review are quite inaccurate in my experience.

Ask anyone who works at Stereophile I am sure they would know :-p