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Reviewed in Canada on March 4, 2025
This is a lovely looking piece of gear with appealing vintage touches like the VU meter but with less appealing vintage touches like the volume on/off control.It has an unusual design: 2.1, meaning it has three complete power amplifier channels: left, right and subwoofer.the sub amp has extra oomph for a larger woofer. I am however puzzled how to deploy this using all three amps. If I had a passive sub I’d need an external line-level high and low pass filter for the L+R mains and subwoofer inputs. It’s rare to find passive subwoofers for sale too. I haven’t seen one lately.It has a beautiful appearance and styling, with a gorgeous satin-like feel to the enclosure. It's fairly hefty to lift and stays solidly in place on my shelf. The knobs rotate super smooth, and the two tone controls have nice clicky zero detents. The illuminated analog VU meter looks great and delightfully vintage, with its contrasting copper ring that matches the volume control.When powered on the input selector searches briefly for an active input. It defaults to the last selected one. Lots of inputs are provided with one each of RCA, digital coax, optical, USB, and the latest Bluetooth 5.3.The sound fidelity is absolutely excellent. I drove my Boston Acoustics A40 sealed enclosure speakers with to moderate levels with no issues whatsoever.I was pleasantly surprised by the excellent fidelity of the Bluetooth connection. It’s clear that Bluetooth 5.3 has some wonderful hi-fi tricks up its sleeve as the quality of that was almost indistinguishable from connecting digital direct by USB-C (from a MacBook). I feel the BT wireless input on this amp is a perfectly usable alternative to WiFi, to be honest.I found a few negatives or "I wish it had":- I think that HDMI eARC would have been a nice input to use this in a TV setup, but optical digital should be okay for most folks.- I don’t like that the power-on/off is done by rotating the volume control. I prefer a separate control for power.- The VU meter barely registers on moderate sound level inputs. In my setup, so it might as well not be there at all.
NG
Reviewed in Canada on March 15, 2025
I’ve been using thiw Fosi Audio MC351 for a bit now, and it really stands out. The sound quality is impressive, with great power and clarity from the chips, especially in the 2.1 setup. I love the vintage VU meter—it's a cool touch that adds a bit of retro flair to the setup. The control design is straightforward, and I’ve had no issues switching between inputs.
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