A Trip to Musical Fidelity
Once my mother learned to drive -- a process that
traumatized many Charlottesville neighborhoods and left its, ummm, impression on
quite a few landmarks -- she began ferrying the kids in my neighborhood all over central
Virginia on a series of field trips. We visited the dairy, a metalcrafting facility, and
at least one power plant. Maybe that left its mark on me, but to this day I love visiting
places where people make stuff.
A good thing, too -- since I visit a lot of audio
manufacturers. You'd think there'd be a certain boring sameness, but even though many
manufacturers use similar equipment and even similar techniques, it's the differences that
impress me. As a result, some of my tour guides have been baffled when I seem more
impressed by a home-built woodshop jig than by their new $3 million CNC machine -- in my
defense, anybody can buy a CNC machine (well, anybody with $3 million credit), but it
takes real ingenuity to create a tool.
When Antony Michaelson invited me to Musical Fidelity's
20th-anniversary bash the night before the recent London HiFi Show
& AVEXPO 2002, I wasted no time in inviting myself to MF's facility a stone's
throw from Wembley stadium. Michaelson seemed surprised at my eagerness, but several MF
components have become long-standing references chez Wes, and it's always nice to
see where old friends come from.
MF's plant is in what must have once been several separate
bays in an industrial park off a mixed-use neighborhood. Over the years, the company has
grown from a single bay to two to three to the whole building. The ground floor is given
over to actually putting the products together, while the upper levels house the offices.
Specimens from Michaelson's art collection liven up
the factory.
Amratben Gorasia assembles an A3.2 power amplifier.
Kesarbai Patel examines a completed A3.2CR
preamplifier in the Miller Research test station.
The torture never stops.
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Throughout the facility, in offices, in
corridors, and on the factory floor, Musical Fidelity has a wide range of paintings,
sketches, and photographs on display. Not posters -- originals. I stopped on the
factory floor to admire a modern watercolor of the fall of light on the countryside just
before a thunderstorm. It was a remarkable piece of work, filled with subtlety and
effortless technique, and I was transfixed.
"What an extraordinary place to hang such a
transcendent work of art," I gushed. Antony shrugged. "What's the point of
having these things if people don't get to enjoy them? Maybe I could have found some place
more 'appropriate' to display them, but here, we can take a break from all this [he
gestured at the bustling factory around us] every time we knowingly look at [these
paintings]."
MF is laid out in a logically linear fashion. A line of
roller track snakes through the assembly area from initial construction to the final
quality-control station, and the various MF components slide along it from one station to
the next. It all starts with a warehouse full of parts, but before long, there are
recognizable audio components moving from station to station. Hand assembly is the
cornerstone of the MF line -- some board stuffing and soldering is automated, but most
procedures are accomplished by living, thinking staffers.
"We've been really fortunate in the caliber of
employees we've had (and kept!) over the years," Michaelson explained. "Of
course, the ones who don't want to work very hard don't last at all, but, I'm happy to
say, most of the really good ones stick around." I met quite a few people who had
been with MF for over 15 years.
"Of course," Antony continued, "we're
particularly keen on catching any problems before they leave the factory, so our quality
control is fanatical." As pieces are built up, major subassemblies are tested both before
and after being attached to the units. And at the end of the line, MF has invested
in two of Paul Miller's automated testing stations -- fascinating and terribly
sophisticated computers that run a suite of torture tests and measurements on every MF
component before it is packed and shipped. (I hope to interview Miller in the near future
on his measurement program.) Problems are flagged and the units are either fixed on the
spot or they are labeled so that the parts that failed can be replaced.
Off to one side of Kesarbai Patel's testing station, I
spotted a machine festooned with warning labels. "What's that?" I asked Antony.
"That's the most dangerous unit in the factory,"
he said. "EU rules about electrical devices are very strict. In order to sell
electronic components in the EU, you must subject them to conditions that are beyond all
reason. That's where we try to fry our stuff by exposing it to unconscionable amounts of
current. Manage to outsmart its safety features and you could quite easily kill yourself
several times over. We'd rather you didn't, of course . . ."
Ha ha -- what a kidder . . . (I think.)
We retired to Antony's office -- I was tired from watching
all those Musical Fidelity employees working.
His office is huge. To the left of the door sits a
drafting table, covered in papers. On the floor are several older models of MF components
connected to a pair of stand-mounted speakers. A small pile of CDs threatens to topple
over next to the X-Ray CD transport. A clarinet stand holding a flared, wooden clarinet
bell sits on the other side of the CD mechanism. A clarinet weighs down papers on Antony's
desk -- proving it is a working instrument, so do several packets of reeds, a reed knife
and cutting station, two mouthpieces, a metronome, and several scores.
Antony sprawls in his desk chair, turning his back to a
wall of windows that reveal a gloriously blue September sky. "So," I ask him,
"what's the secret to keeping a company alive for 25 years?"
Antony answers the question before I've finished forming
the words. "People want you to think running a business is incredibly hard, but it's
not. That's just a matter of being aware of what you're spending and what you're charging
and keeping one lower than the other."
"Yeah, but a lot of companies have gone under from
forgetting to keep the spending part lower than the charging part," I joked.
Antony didn't laugh. "Unfortunately, that's true. We
remain successful because we work hard and we try not to spend much on the stuff that
doesn't make components sound good. We're efficient. A lot of audio companies never get
out of what we think of as the prototype stage.
Prototypes are very expensive to manufacture. You build
them one at a time and everything is done by hand."
"You do a lot of work by hand," I pointed out.
"Yes, but we focus on doing the stuff by hand that
requires a human intelligence to control. When we need to, we spend heavily on things like
production tooling, which allows us to produce our casework in large volumes. We try to
use the same electronic components in as many products as possible so we can take
advantage of quantity pricing and we buy really efficiently -- we're not afraid of buying
really large quantities if it guarantees a favorable price.
"In fact, when we were offered a virtual monopoly on
the world supply of nuvistors, we thought nothing of buying them all, just to guarantee
spares for our customers.
"Simply put, most expensive audio products aren't
expensive because they use rare parts or complex circuits -- a lot of them are expensive
because they are, in essence, limited editions. Does an expensive power amp sound better
than an affordable one? After you reach a certain quality level, no, it doesn't. You can't
hear a half-inch-thick faceplate or a fancy finish."
"But," I said. "There is such a thing as
pride of ownership."
"Absolutely!" Antony agreed. "That's why we
buy gold trim for the A3 series and anodize our faceplates -- people want nice
things. And they should have them, as long as they understand what they are really paying
for.
"If you want the most expensive power amplifier on
earth -- something nobody else you know can afford -- I'm terribly sorry, I can't help
you. However, if you want an amplifier that competes sonically with the most
expensive kit out there, then I make several.
"If expensive is what you want, you have two choices:
Either buy somebody else's hi-fi or, I suppose, you could lie -- buy our stuff and then
make up a price."
Antony thought about that and then leaned back in his chair
looking happy. "I won't tell."
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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