Roth MC4

We all like good looking, well made gadgets. We own iPods, after all. But at the end of the day, what counts in any audio equipment is how it improves our listening experience. We chose iPods, after all. And to me, and Im sure to you, performance matters more than looks.

So when it comes to amps and speakers what matters most to me is what they make my music sound like.

I dont care much for the pointless, sterile arguments about the pros and cons of valve amplifiers, and about whether or not compressed music files can or cant benefit. I just plug my iPod in and listen, and if it sounds better, then it gets the tick in the box, and if it doesnt then it doesnt.

Ive been using a Fatman iTube for some months, now, after first encountering one in my local John Lewis Department Store. Plugging my iPod in, even in a cavernous store, the sound was lovely and different enough from the sound produced by the demo Bose Companions, Sounddocks, Jamo i300s and iPod Stereo that passers by stopped and marvelled. The difference really is that stark and music really does sound that good.

In the home, the Fatman provides great quality, room-filling sound that sounds better than I ever thought music from an iPod could and which does so from a small unit with a tiny footprint. The iTube is fairly fragile (its packed with vacuum tubes) and relies on mains power, so its not entirely portable, in the strictest sense of the term. But for a person going back and forth to and from college every term, it would be ideal, Id have thought, and a number of famous rock bands (including Coldplay and the Who) use them on tour for their hotel rooms.

And though it is made in China the Fatman is marketed and backed by TL Audio, a thoroughly British company based in Letchworth who have an awesome reputation in the pro audio industry, for whom the Fatman brand is used for consumer level products. Not Made in England, strictly speaking but a purchase that benefits a British firm, and a product backed by a UK company, with all that infers for post sales support.

And that was the cheapest, lowest end Fatman iTube so goodness knows what the more powerful Carbon edition sounds like, or the more expensive versions, I thought.

And now I have a point of comparison, in the shape of the Roth Music Cocoon MC4.

You can buy the Fatman with or without packed-in speakers (for 299 without speakers, and 399 with, though John Lewis are selling the unit with speakers for just 299 at the moment, and you can find the Fatman for 219 without speakers on Amazon).

By comparison the Roth is sold 'as is' for 395 (Amazon), with power adaptor and cables and a remote, but with no speakers, and without even a list of speaker recommendations, beyond the guidance that you need speakers with an impedence of 8 ohms or greater.

This will deter the lazy, (and perhaps the cost conscious, to whom spending 500 in one hit can sometimes be easier than spending 400 + 100 separately which requires two purchasing decisions) which is a shame, since (to my astonishment, as a Fatman convert and fan) the MC4 outperforms the Fatman handsomely.

The Music Cocoon experience begins with opening the box. In just the same way that Apple go to town on making their packaging classy, so too do the boys at Roth. Opening up the package you come to a top layer of expanded foam which contains the instruction book, the various adaptors for the power adpaptor/transformer (UK/US/European) the 3-5-mm jack lead, and the speaker cables (with banana clips), as well as a pair of white cotton gloves (you wouldnt want to finger-mark it, after all!) and the remote, to which we will return.

The MC4 itself, and the power brick occupy a bottom layer of expanded foam. Everything was well and securely packaged, and everything felt as though quality was the driving factor behind selection. The power adpaptor/transformer brick was a perfect example of this, since it is large, heavy and its metal chassis is screwed (not riveted) together.

Everything about the MC4 screams quality and attention to detail, and everything feels wonderful. In the flesh, the unit feels and looks so much better than you'd guess from photos. The perspex valve guard arrangement, for example, is especially nice in real life. This thing really is a tactile joy, and it's the ultimate 'big boy's toy' to have on your desk.

Since no speakers were included, I hooked the MC4 up to a number of alternatives that we had in the house, settling on a pair of Tannoy Fusion 1s as being the closest match to the speakers that ship with the rival Fatman, which we also own. It also seemed appropriate to mate a Valve amp from a UK firm with speakers from a UK firm.

I suspect that the results would be lifted by using better modern speakers. It would be interesting to team the iTube and the MC4 with Fatmans Fatboys, perhaps, or with the uber trendy, uber funky-looking spherical speakers by Anthony Gallo, which might complement the MC4s space age styling very nicely.

Setting up was simple and straightforward, with two banana clips from each speaker, a nicely engineered lead from the transformer (with a press to release clip) with video out, and with 3.5-mm and standard stereo jacks for CD players or non-docking iPods (or even for other MP3 players, perish the thought).

Turning the unit on requires you to press and hold the volume button (the left hand of two machined metal rotary dials), until the valves light up, when it can be released. Source (3.5 mm jack, labelled MP3, stereo cables, labelled CD, or iPod dock) can be selected using the right hand rotary dial.

Alternatively, control can be exercised via the remote control.

The remote deserves a mini review all of its own, since it looks great, and is solidly constructed of metal with a rubber-like matt black layer of paint on the bottom. But mine shipped with a dead battery (CR2032) requiring me to unscrew the battery compartment with the provided Phillips screwdriver and insert a new one.

The remote does almost everything you might want it to, and feels expensive and substantial in the hand especially by comparison with the flimsy and plasticky unit that ships with the Fatman iTube. The (metal) buttons require a good firm push, and the thing is beautifully shaped in the hand. But actually, I found the layout of the buttons counter-intuitive and while you can access all iPod menus from a distance at which the iPods screen is unreadable, navigating up and down a menu requires a series of pushes on the up and down arrows, as there seems to be no way of holding down a button in order to scroll through a list more quickly.

Nor was I able to find an easy way of scrolling through a long song to reach a particular time point.

But all of that is peripheral, because what matters is the music, man!

And valves do seem to me to make a really significant difference, even on compressed 192 kbps MP3 files. I tried some uncompressed AIFF files, too, and they sounded even more fantastic allowing the iPod to reproduce genuinely CD quality music.

To my ears, the Roth MC4 sounded noticeably better than the Fatman iTube did though I have not yet had a chance to get my wife to double blind test me on this, so that is hardly a scientific conclusion. That has also been the opinion of all six people whove heard the machine in situ in my house so far. The iTube sounds marginally but noticeably louder, however.

This is, of course, comparing the 13 watt-per-channel MC4 against the baseline 13 watt-per-channel iTube, rather than against the more powerful 25 watt-per-channel iTube Carbon Edition, which I hope to sample at a later date.

I would have to say that either the iTube or the MC4 are great pieces of kit, and can be safely recommended. If money is not an objection, and if you already have (or want the fun of finding) appropriate speakers, or if desktop/tabletop real estate is limited (the Roth has a much smaller footprint than the iTube) then Id have to recommend the MC4, but the iTube is a more than worthy alternative if money is tight.

And either blows the usual iPod docking/speaker combinations out of the water (we could compare it directly against the Jamo i300 and the Bose Companion 3, and the iPod Hi Fi), delivering music at a quality that you would not believe. Eat your heart out Bose, this is how music is meant to sound!

Pics to follow!