Nu-Vista 800 (DISCONTINUED) - Design and Build

Fifteen years ago, Musical Fidelity were the first company in the world to use nuvistor tubes for their high-end NuVista series. The original NuVista series (NuVista pre amp, NuVista M3 integrated, NuVista 300 power amp and NuVista 3D CD player) created a sensation when they were launched in 1999. They gave an almost perfect balance between state of the art transistor and tube design.

Because there were only limited tube bases available in 1999, the NuVista series were all made in limited editions.Their reputation is legendary and, to this day, used NuVista series products for very high prices.

Background on nuvistors

Nuvistor tubes were designed in the late 1950s. Their design process took into account all the criticisms and weaknesses of the standard glass tubes that had gone before. As a result, nuvistor tubes offered:

• A work of audio art using our incredible Nu-Vistor circuit
• Unprecedented reliability
• Compact size
• Very low microphony
• State of the art technical performance
• Total consistency between manufacturing batches

Indeed, nuvistors were the ultimate, high performance, triode tube. Unfortunately for them, transistors were just coming of age as nuvistors became available.

A bright new dawn

For at least three years after the launch of the original NuVista series, Antony Michaelson tried to get more tube bases. Nuvistor tubes were plentiful but bases were impossible to obtain. After a time, he stopped searching.

As many of you know, Antony Michaelson is persistent. About eighteen months ago, he started thinking about NuVistas again. This time, things were different.

Via the internet, he was able to locate what are probably the last nuvistor bases on this planet Earth. Antony was thrilled. He purchased all that could be found.

This made it possible for Musical Fidelity to realise their dream of manufacturing more nuvistor-based products, including the new mega super integrated, the NuVista 800.

This time, they would be able to combine their state of the art NuVista technology with their state of the art Surface Mount Design PCB techniques, and the new designs would benefit from the freedom of layout that they offer.

General description

The NuVista 800’s front end is positioned on the same PCB as the input circuitry. This keeps all PCB tracks as short as possible, and ensures that this highly sensitive function is at right angles to any stray hyseresis field from the transformers, ensuring superlative sonic performance.

The nuvistor stage itself combines nuvistor tubes with our exclusive Surface Mount Design and technology systems. This allows them to perform at a level never seen before.

The power amp stage is derived from our monster Titan amp, regarded by many as one of the best amplifiers ever made. However, they have made subtle improvements to the circuit, squeezing even more performance from what was already a legendary circuit design.

The overall configuration is dual mono, with a separate 1.5 kV, super silent drive mains transformer per channel.

The result -maximum performance from every part of the circuit- clearly shows just how much of a labour of love and passion for the NuVista 800 was for us.

Technical performance

The NuVista 800 delivers a comfortable 300 wpc. It is capable of truly massive current swings: about 200 Amps peak to peak. In a word, vast. Distortion at 1kHz is vanishingly low at 0.002%. At 10 kHz, it is about 0.003% and at 20 kHZ 0.004%. These are extraordinary figures. More astonishingly is the distortion into 4 Ohms (1kHz) is its exactly the same is into 8 Ohms.

NuVista 800 has very low noise and excellent stereo separation.

Because of its huge peak current capability, it can drive any speaker with any cable, without breaking a sweat.

NuVista 800 combines the beauty, delicacy and poise of state of the art tube and semiconductor design blended with massive power and current.