Hitachi MXV-50 Slimline System Review

The Hitachi MXW-50 is a completely integrated audio system. Its central component is an am/fm stereo receiver that is rated to deliver 50 watts per channel into 8-ohm loads. The single chassis also contains a dual-transport “dubbing” cassette deck and a full-featured CD player. Only speakers need to be added to form a complete music system almost totally free of visible wires and requiring a minimum of space for its installation.

The MXW-50 comes with a wireless remote control for the full system, including some features not available from the front panel. In spite of its completeness, the MXW-50 is a very compact, “low-profile” unit measuring only 25-1/4 inches wide and 14-1/2 inches deep. Its height tapers from 1-3/4 inches at the front to 5-1/4 inches near the rear. It weighs 20-1/2 pounds.

The MXW-50 is housed in an allblack, molded-plastic case with hinged plastic doors covering the CD and tape sections. The tape and CD operating controls are large, well-marked pushbuttons. There is no recording-level control (or indicator) since the deck has a nondefeatable automatic level-control circuit. Similarly, there are no switches for tape equalization or recording bias.

As in other dubbing decks, the MXW-50’s two tape transports have separate controls. The right transport (tape l) has only a playback head, but the left (tape 2) has a conventional record/playback head and an erase head. The deck can copy in a double-speed mode as well as at the standard 1-7/8-ips speed.

Both transports are autoreverse, and the system can be set to play for extended periods in a fully automatic mode initiated by a single button. A CD is played first, followed by tape l in both directions, then by tape 2 in both directions. A small pushbutton switches the Dolby B noise reduction on or off, and two other buttons control the autoreverse operation of the transports, including uninterrupted bidirectional recording on tape 2. Instead of conventional tone controls, the MXW-50 has a five-band graphic equalizer. The index counter operates only with the tape 2 transport.

The operating status of the top-loading CD player is displayed on a fluorescent indicator at the top (rear) of the panel. An adjacent window contains a matrix of twenty compartments, called the “Music Table,” in which track numbers appear as they are being played. The player can be programmed with up to thirty-two selections on a disc in any desired sequence by means of a keypad on the remote control.

The digital-synthesis tuner is operated by a number of small buttons. The tuning increments are 50 kHz for fm and 10 kHz for am (switchable to 9 kHz for countries using that spacing). In the auto mode (FM only), the tuner scans the band until it encounters the next sufficiently strong signal. Up to twenty presets are available, each assignable to an am or an fm frequency. The only knob is a large volume control flush with the panel and slightly indented for the user’s fingertip. It has a clearly visible red led index marker and can be motor-operated from two buttons on the remote control.

The rear of the cabinet has insulated spring clips for the speaker wires, a 75-ohm fm antenna, and the supplied wire-loop am antenna, which is detachable so that it can be oriented for best reception. There are phono-jack inputs for a magnetic cartridge and an external high-level (aux) source, and there is a set of fixed-level line outputs for driving an external amplifier or accessory. Price: $799.

Lab Tests

The published specifications for the Hitachi MXW-50 do not conform to EIA standards and cannot be compared with those of most audio components offered for home use in this country. Similarly, the power rating of its amplifier section does not follow the format required by the Federal Trade Commission. Therefore, our test data should not be compared too critically with the manufacturer’s specifications. It is obvious that this system was designed for use throughout the world. The manual is written in English, French, Dutch, German, and Spanish, adaptors are supplied for several types of power sockets used in other countries, and the system has a user-adjustable power-line voltage selector.

Although the FM tuner has only a 75-ohm antenna input, it lacks the coaxial F-type jack customarily used for connecting a 75-ohm antenna system to a receiver, and a common 300- to 75-ohm transformer cannot be used for the same reason. Strangely, a conventional 300-ohm dipole antenna was furnished with the MXW-50, and we used it with perfectly satisfactory results.

The MXW-50’s fm sensitivity, though slightly lower than that of most tuners or receivers we have tested recently, was quite adequate for most installations. The noise level was low, as was the mono distortion, but the stereo distortion was on the high side. The stereo channel separation was a nearly constant 25 to 27 dB, sufficient for a good stereo effect but quite a bit short of the performance of most tuners. The am sound quality was far more listenable than that of most other am tuners.

With a normal 120-ms tape, the playback deck (tape i) had a virtually flat response in both directions, though the ± 1-dB variations fell in different parts of the frequency range. The 70-^s response was roughly the same, with closer correspondence between forward and reverse directions. The low frequencies rolled off at about 6 dB per octave below 120 Hz, and the highs dropped rapidly above 16,000 Hz. The playback response of the record/playback deck (tape 2) was roughly similar.

The record-playback response of TAPE 2, using a maximum-level (0-dB) signal from a test CD in the MXW-50’s own CD player, was within +1, — 3 dB from 45 to 7,500 Hz. The output fell steeply at higher frequences to — 10 dB at 11,000 Hz. The tape-dubbing response was much better, perhaps because we used a standard TDK test tape (recorded at a — 20-dB level) for the source and recorded on Maxell XL-IIS. The resulting tape 2 playback was flat within ±0.5 dB from 120 to 12,500 Hz (the upper limit of the test tape) in the forward direction and within about ±2 dB over that range in reverse. In high-speed dubbing the forward response was ±1.5 dB from 100 to 10,000 Hz.

The CD player’s frequency response was flat within ±0.3 dB from 35 to 20,000 Hz, falling to — 0.9 dB at 20 Hz. The square-wave response indicated the use of analog low-pass filtering following digital-to-analog conversion, and the phase shift of 90 degrees at 20,000 Hz showed that a single converter was being multiplexed between the channels.

After preconditioning, the amplifier of the MXW-50 clipped at 52.5 watts with both channels driving 8-ohm loads at 1,000 Hz. Into 4 ohms, the clipping output was 60 watts. The distortion was about 0.3 percent at 0.1 watt, falling smoothly to around 0.1 percent or less at several watts output and remaining at that level nearly to the clipping point. Into 4 ohms the distortion was slightly higher. At the rated 50 watts output, the distortion was about 0.15 to 0.2 percent from 30 to 3,000 Hz, increasing to almost 0.5 percent at 20,000 Hz and 0.7 percent at 20 Hz. At half-power and one-tenth power, the distortion was between 0.08 and 0.1 percent from 20 to 2.000 Hz, reaching 0.35 percent at 20.000 Hz.

Although the manual makes no mention of it, the MXW-50 has nondefeatable loudness compensation, which boosted both low and high frequencies slightly at volume settings below —30 dB but had an inverse effect near maximum volume, where it rolled off both lows and highs.

Comments

The Hitachi MXW-50 is unlike any other audio product we have tested because it is so complete and so totally integrated. It enables those who do not care to get involved with selecting and connecting separate components to obtain a truly complete system with a minimum of fuss or complexity. And it is a surprisingly good system. Whether it is “true hi-fi” depends on your definition of that term.

The tape recordings and dubs that this unit makes will probably not satisfy critical listeners or hard-core audiophiles, but they were always listenable in our tests, and any frequency-response deficiencies are likely to be correctable with the built-in graphic equalizer. The CD player is definitely comparable to the lower-priced models from most manufacturers, and no apologies need be made for its sound or operating flexibility.

The tuner worked well and sounded fine, though its fm performance was more reminiscent of a good car stereo tuner than a typical home unit. It is unfortunate that there is no display of the selected preset number, since the user will need an excellent memory to recall which frequency corresponds to each of the twenty preset channels!

Anyone buying the MXW-50 should make sure that the unit purchased is set up for 110- to 120-volt operation—ours lit up after a fashion but was mute until we discovered from the manual that it was factory set for 230-240 volts! Also, be aware that the output levels of the tuner, CD player, and tape decks are not matched. In our tests, switching from one of the other sources to the tuner produced an unwelcome change in sound level. And I have reservations about the value of a “power level indicator” that does not respond to volume-control changes in a system where the power level is never under the user’s control.

Nevertheless, the Hitachi MXW-50 is a worthwhile and ingeniously designed product that, combined with a couple of speakers, can provide a good and unusually complete music system at a list price under $1,000 (slightly more if you add a record player). I doubt that a system of equal versatility and quality could be put together from separate components for less.

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