MF-100 Review

Musical Fidelity is a brand that you might not be all that familiar with, but they have been producing high-end hi-fi gear for some 30 years now. The company recently unveiled a range of consumer headphones, bringing its considerable experience at the high end to a wider audience…

Manufacturer Musical Fidelity
Price £119
Contact Musical Fidelity 020 8900 2866
Web www.musicalfidelity.com

The MF-100s are on-ear headphones and they were ‘designed to make a beautiful, lifelike sound. You can hear the artist’s creation as it was intended’ – a heck of a claim. So just like a great set of studio monitors, then? At £120, they might seem a lot for a set of headphones, but if they do the job of a £5k set of speakers, you’re laughing…

But before we get to the sound, there are a couple of minor annoyances to report. The first was simply getting them out of the box to review them – incredibly difficult, but you’ll have to do this only once as there’s a rather nice soft case provided for you to store them in. The second issue is the length of the lead. At a little more than one metre, it’s simply not long enough to be adequate in a studio situation, when you might be monitoring using the headphones and moving around to adjust levels at the same time. This is a shame as the ’phones themselves do sound great.

There’s nice detail around the lower mids and the treble is also quite pronounced – not coloured, just a little bold. The bass, interestingly enough, didn’t shine through all the time, and this lack of colouration should be a good thing for mixing, although you might not be able to do longer sessions (as ever, we’d recommend mixing things about a bit anyway and taking rests).

Back to the sound and presentation. The imaging is wide and immersive and you really do get all the detail you should need. Whether these really do give you what the artist intended is debatable, but they certainly sound good for the outlay – just be sure to buy yourself an extension lead to make your life in the studio a little easier.