By name and styling, Musical Fidelity sets out its plans for the A1008 integrated amplifier. Its name harks back to the classic A1000 amplifier of the early 1990s, so you know it's going to sound enticing. Its looks are almost identical to the mighty and current kW 550 amp, so you know it's powerful.

There's more to this amplifier than meets the eye on casual inspection. The A1008 is a large, two-box integrated amplifier design. That's not an oxymoron - the amplifier has a separate power supply, but the signal handling and gain stages are all in the one big box.

Alongside the normal line-level inputs, it sports not only a MM/MC switchable phono stage (now rare in new amps) but comes with a built-in 24-bit/192kHz Delta-Sigma DAC, not too dissimilar to the company's own X-DACv8.

This even includes a USB socket, allowing the computer to join forces with the hi-fi electronics without compromising the sound through a PC sound card. With an increasing number of computers being used as music servers, this is becoming an important aspect of hi-fi replay and Musical Fidelity has anticipated the increasing demand.

One of Musical Fidelity's mainstays in the catalogue has been the X-10D in all its guises. It's a tube buffer stage featuring ECC88 double triode valves, which effectively irons out any inconsistencies between the output of the source component and input of the amplifier - some source components deliver a high output impedance, which is precisely not what most amplifiers want at their input stages.

By buffering that input impedance and delivering a more amp-chummy lower output impedance, all's well. The X-10D proved extremely popular... and that circuit is in the A1008, nestling snugly at the input stage of the preamp section.

The rest of the amplifier is pure solid-state meat. The power amp stage comprises two monoblocks in the same case, capable of delivering 250 watts into eight ohms and a healthy 400 watts into four, running in Class AB.

This is essentially a scaled-down version of the kW 550 design, to such a close degree that Musical Fidelity claims that - if using loudspeakers of 89dB sensitivity or higher - the two products are indistinguishable from one another.

The bigger, more expensive kW 550 will have the edge when played through less efficient speakers because of its greater headroom. That's it.