 We probably start to get used to it slowly: Prima Luna, Advance Acoustic, Music Hall and other companies, are examples of how to introduce a nominally European – or in case of Melody – Australian company to the market, whose products actually come from China. In all cases, to a smaller or bigger extent, the idea came from the non-Chinese partner, and only the manufacturing part is fully transferred to the descendants of the Great Wall builders. That is also the case with Melody. The only “nationality complication” is the fact, that in Europe the company is represented by the French branch, being part of Melody Europe. )
I got acquainted with this brand two years ago during the High End Show in Munich (review 2005 – HERE; 2006 – HERE) where my sight was drawn by the beautiful, piano varnished enclosures and unusual, round shapes of the 101D tubes. However it was hard to get in contact with the people from Melody – I will not hide that, but they were just preparing to a jump to Europe. It was much better last year, and I received help from an exceptionally nice representative of the company named Lela. The portfolio did not change much, only two new amplifiers were added, that created a new product line called SP. And just that year was probably very successful for Melody – first the splendid review of the SP3 (the smaller brother of the tested SP9) in my favorite magazine Hi-Fi Plus, followed by the Award of the Year of that magazine. The situation was heated-up by Ken Kessler (we have written a few things about him in the lead articles), who visited the Chinese factory of Melody, from where he brought the preamplifier pure black 101, admired it and wrote about it in a large reportage in Hi-Fi Choice. In the April issue of Hi-Fi News (vol.52, No. 4) a nice review of this preamplifier appeared, by Steve Harris (the long-term editor in chief of that magazine). So there is a consensus, that the devices are at least interesting, and by “training” we gained some kind of immunity to the impressive enclosures, that cover most products coming from the land of Mao. )
I talked to Lela about borrowing a product for testing in HFOL last year. Actually she the first to propose a test, but it turned out soon, that the demo devices are very popular, and we will have to wait for some time. But I got used to that – Poland is at the end of the list for most companies, as in spite of the rising economic, the audio sector trails behind. Anyway, when two months ago, the SP9 came to me, brought by a strong courier representative, and it turned out that nothing got broken during transport, I rejoiced. Just. And the device looks very rich – in spite of a quite low price it is built very solid – what the Chinese slowly bring to perfection – but it also looks very nice, the last one is not so obvious. The SP line received a silvery finish by means of a car varnish in silver metallic color. Also the front panel is formed in a way to not resemble the simple fronts of other tube amplifiers. The layout of the amplifying sections is however classic, as we have the input tubes and drivers of the output tubes (all of them are octal 6NS7 with the Melody logo), the power tubes being placed just behind them – four KT88 giving 50W- and in the far end transformers in shields. In the middle another tube is visible – the 5AR4 rectifier. No remote. SOUND )
The Melody SP( can be identified as a tube device from the very beginning and without a trace of doubt. There is something in the Chinese devices, that they have a natural tendency to sound just like we think they should sound. This tendency brought to extremes ends in muffled and glued together sound. Here, fortunately, the significant energy of the upper midrange was kept. That is the reason, the SP9 sounds quite fresh and in an open way, although it's way of sounding can be described in general as warm. The attack of the instruments is slightly rounded, what gives a nice effect, however the euphony in the midrange is not especially underlined. This allows for not masking of the details, things that make the sound “live”. So when in the piece “See-Saw” from the disc Tricks of Life of Novika (Kayax/EMI, KAYAX013, CD), where the voice was recorded in a significantly worse way than in other pieces, the Melody, despite the predilection of making the sound nicer, did not mask it, did not equalize it. The bass was fleshy and quite strong, although not going down very low, and a bit loosened and not fully controlled at the very deep end. With open speakers, like Harpia Acoustics Marcus or Audiovector M1 the amplifier can sometimes sound a bit strong on the upper midrange. So you have to pay attention when choosing the source and cables. Completely splendid was the sound of the amplifier with the A.D.A.M. HM2 speakers. Their slightly laid back range we are talking about combined splendidly with the SP9, giving an incredibly fluent, dense sound. This duo had class. The stage was not overly deep, there were no exact focusing on the far planes, but rather a continuous background was shown for the events, happening closer to the listener. It is worth to mention, that unlike other tube amplifiers nothing was thrown at the listeners face, the instruments are not pulled in front of the speakers. Anyway the first planes with voices – earlier Novika, now Anja Garbarek from the disc Briefly Shaking (EMI, 860802, CCD) – were shown on the speaker baseline, so on their proper place. In more expensive devices they have more vividness, meaning that while they come a little closer, they have a much better filling in the back, so it seems as if they are more to the back. The upper treble is a little laid back, but paradoxically it cannot be heard through the strong midrange, and in addition we avoid many problems with related to inferior recordings or copy controlled ones (this is what I describe as CCD: Copy Controlled Disc). )
Truly audiophile recordings, like those from the disc True Audiophile. The Best of Groove Note (Groove Note, GRV 1036-3, SACD/CD) sounded much better than the mainstream discs, but it was not a “night and day” difference. On one hand it shows that the resolution of the amplifier is good, although not outstanding, on the other, it shows that all discs from our collection – maybe with the exception of the last album of Sting – Songs From The Labyrinth (Deutsche Grammophon 170 3139, CD), that cannot be helped – will sound at least well, or rather equally pleasant, maybe without surprises, but also without a trace of problems. The sizes of the virtual sources, as the listening to the piece Light My Fire from the mentioned disc, sung by Jacintha, showed, are nicely drawn and properly placed. Focusing on further planes is not a priority of this device, it is more about showing a holistic whole. Interestingly, with the Marcus, the Melody did not emphasize the warm upper bass, that underlined by tube amplifiers leads most of the time to slowing of the sound, but showed this frequency range in a sleek and condensed way. It was clearly to be heard on the disc of Nat “King” Cole – Night Lights (Capitol/EMI, 531964, CD), where the orchestra led by Nelson Riddle had a quick, agile character. DESCRIPTION )
The integrated amplifier Melody SP9 has a classic set-up for that kind of devices: in front four 6SN7 tubes – double triodes in octal base, providing initial amplification and controlling the output tubes. And those are the known and liked KT88 – stream tetrodes, used as power tubes. There is another tube to be found – full cycle rectifying bridge 5AR4 (GZ34). All tubes have the Melody logo on them, but it is an easy guess that they come from China. Behind the tubes, in separate boxes, the transformers were placed – the output ones and the power supply one. The front of the device is specially profiled. Although we think at first that it is made from aluminum, it turns out that it is made from varnished MDF. Protruding from it are beautifully turned, heavy knobs for volume control, power and input selector. There are only four inputs present, and there is no line level output provided – either from preamplifier or for the tape recorder (or headphone amplifier). The RCA sockets themselves are of high quality, those are valued sockets from the American company CMC. The gold plated speaker terminals, separate for the 4 and 8Ω speakers, are more common, similar to those used by companies like Rotel, Edgar and similar. The device is standing on three solid aluminum cones. The tubes can be covered by a special cage, that looks especially nice, and I can easily understand people that will not take it off. A curious detail is that on the sockets for the pins holding the cage to the enclosure the name “Melody” is engraved – a little thing, but makes us happy. There is nothing special to surprise us after opening of the enclosure – we have got used to the very high quality of the point to point mounting, clean set-up and overall attention to detail. However there are a few items that stand out in this design. First of all the power supply is extremely worked out – the output tubes have dual mono power supply, with separate secondary windings, the 6NS7 section is separately supplied with power – the tube 5AR4 is for them, also the glowing of that section, with a nice, stabilized power supply. Quite a surprise is also the volume control – it is not a potentiometer, but a stepped regulator with nice metalized, precise resistors. The signal gets to it from the input selector, and to the selector with quite long cables from the input terminals. The rest of the passive elements also looks nice, as all resistors (except for the mighty, 25 watt cathode ones for the KT88) are precise, metalized, in the interstage feedback polypropylenes were used (unfortunately Chinese, but those can be exchanged after purchase – it will surely be better), and the capacitors of the KT88 power supply were decoupled with WIMA polypropylenes. The circuit is built not directly on the chassis, but on an additional, rigid metal plate. The construction of the SP9 is exceptionally good, even for China built products, and I see no weak points here (maybe the Chinese capacitors).
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