Putting on my tin hat and seeing as this is the MP40 dedicated thread, here's my recent experience of having an MP40 and 3 x SDA2400s in my lounge for a week. My thanks to Rob for the loan.
I remember excitedly driving home with all the boxes in the car after listening to all the latest demo systems at Gecko and being impressed with all of them. During the journey, I was convinced that I would shortly be ending up with either a MP40 or more likely a MP60 with a SDA8400 power amp when it was released. That wasn't to be the case unfortunately and for reasons that might make you all laugh, but that were important to me and my better half.
Simple to install and set up as usual, but then I've borrowed so much stuff from Rob and watched him do Room Perfect calibrations, I think I know what I'm doing now. It is all a breeze to set up though.
System configured for my use (5.1 only) and RP calibration completed, I set about listening tests. As expected, stereo music sounded excellent and so very much better than via my Arcam using Dirac. At last all kinds of music sounded consistently excellent. Having said that, I didn't think it was quite as good as my experience of the TDAi3400s I've tried in my system, but more on that later.
Concert Blu Rays (my favourite material to watch) all sounded better. Movies mostly sounded better, but I noticed a few times that bass impact didn't seem to be there in a few scenes that I knew well. After a few REW measurements, it looked to me that it was probably just my room layout and seating position. It affected so very few things and was so good on 99% of material that I could forgive that. Given time, I felt that I could probably improve it anyway.
Where it all fell down for me is for normal TV watching, especially in the evening. If I had a dedicated cinema room, none of the following would apply and I'd already be the owner of a MP60 (most likely) and be impatiently waiting for a SDA8400. Watching on the TV via my Virgin Media V6 box was horrible. I had to keep diving for the remote control due to significant volume differences between programmes and adverts and when switching from a normal channel to a HD channel, etc. The sound from the V6 was also thin and flat to my ears. Compared to my Arcam AVR850 which has a Dolby Volume feature that tends equalise the sound between channels and ads and that also tends fill out the sound, the MP40 was an epic fail. The DV feature is probably the one thing that I would miss about Arcam.
I think other brands have a similar feature as I don't recall such a noticeable difference when I tried Marantz, Denon and Anthem AVRs last year, but maybe I didn't get that far with them as they were returned quite quickly.
So the Lyngdorf MP40 didn't work out for me, but I don't want this review to come out as negative as it really wasn't. There was simply one key feature missing that happens to be very important for domestic harmony and our personal use. It was a pleasure to use otherwise and sounded fantastic.
Does this mean I'm not going to be a Lyngdorf user? Hell no! I realised that as soon as I had boxed everything up to return it and had got the Arcam back in situ, I simply could live with the Arcam and Dirac for my music listening (about 50% of my use), so I bought a Lyngdorf TDAi3400 and have integrated it with my AVR850, successfully this time (didn't spend enough time integrating it on previous loans and have learned a lot by using REW).
After 5 days am I happy? You betcha! It's sounding amazing to my ears and I still think the TDAi sounds better in stereo mode that the MP40 did. There's really not that much in it, but to my ears, it sounds slightly cleaner and more dynamic. I've no measurements to back that up, just what my ears are telling me, so could be wrong. Only 5 days, but I've yet to find anything, CDs, MP3s, Blu Rays, etc that doesn't sound better than my Arcam on its own with Dirac engaged. Happy days!
I still think that Room Perfect is so much easier to set up and live with than Audyssey, ARC and Dirac. At least that's been my experience. I've been wanting room correction that just consistently worked for me without having to constantly worry about Harman curves, setting curtains, etc etc and RP does that for me. I have zero experience of Trinnov and haven't heard yet, so obviously can't say anything about that system.
I can say that if at some time in the future, Lyngdorf do something about the way their processors deal with TV sound from the likes of Sky or Virgin, I'll most certainly give them another try, but for now the 3400 will suit my needs.
I guess this all means that I can only participate in the Lyngdorf stereo threads from now on.