Musical Fidelity M6 Encore now available

You might recall that I met the Musical Fidelity M6 Encore at ‘The Bristol’ Show earlier this year. The great news is, that you can now buy this incredible all-in-one Hi-Fi unit.

The Encore 225 is an audio amplifier/source component allowing you to keep all your music in one place. The similarly named M6 Encore Connect is a preamp/source. More details here.

I already know that I will like the amplification from this new member of the M6 family as my living room system is powered by the Musical Fidelity M6si.

The brain of this all-in-one system is a dual core 64bit Intel CPU which is, as Musical Fidelity puts it, “as future proof as we can make it”.

The Encore 225 accepts almost any conceivable analogue or digital audio source. It is also compatible with many network speakers, such as Sonos.

The design team at Musical Fidelity have obviously spent a lot of time getting the face of the unit symmetrical – I think it is this level of OCD that attracted me to the brand in the first place. Holding centre stage is a very clear, large, high-resolution full colour display so you can see what’s going on. This wasn’t quite right when I saw it in Bristol but the video below shows it doing its thing nicely.
[youtube id=”phf0mBpt7XU”]
On the back of the unit you’ll find three “true” analogue inputs – these don’t go anywhere near a digital path, ie, analogue –> digital –> analogue. No sireee. These start as analogue, so perfect for your cassette players, turntables and reel to reels, and remain so all the way through the chain.

You also get four digital (two optical, two coaxial), three USB Type A (there’s another up front which will also charge smartphones and tablets), and one USB Type B. The player can handle full-fat hi-res audio up to 32-bit/384kHz and boasts 225 watts per channel.

Other features include a headphone amplifier, fixed and variable line level outputs and one digital output.

The built-in CD player doubles as a ripper and is coupled to an upgradeable 1TB hard drive, which should be enough for more than 2500 CDs.

You can, of course, stream internet radio as well as services such as Tidal – but the Encore is designed to house your music collection so that there’s no buffering (thanks to 2GB of RAM). You can either rip your CDs or “drag and drop” your digital tunes direct to the Musical Fidelity system.

You can control the new powerhouse via either the supplied remote control or accompanying Android and iOS app.

If this isn’t exactly what you are looking for then there’s potentially more exciting news – although no future products have been formally announced yet, internal discussions are well advanced on both M3 Encore and Nu-Vista Encore products.

These products will of course be different in many respects. However, all features that exist on the M6 Encore, and make sense on the other products, will be available.

I am really interested in doing a side-by-side comparison with my current Oppo/M6si-powered system and this lovely looking thing.

Musical Fidelity M6 Encore price and availability

The Encore 225 and Encore Connect are both available now.

The Encore 225 is retailing for around £4,000 and the Encore Connect at £3,300.