Intro
Contents
It’s always interesting to take a statement product from a top manufacturer in hand. The North Collection’s MOON 891 pre-amp, dac, streamer and MOON 861 power amplifier are not officially the Halo-products: the MOON 850P pre-amp and MOON 888 mono power amplifiers go even further. Especially when a dac and streamer are then added. Still, with a total price of almost 55,000 Euros, the MOON 891 and 861 are not a queasy duo! And they are still 800-series products. So we have the question: how good are these brand new beauties?
Despite the fact that this MOON duo is technically very impressive, we set up this review in a pretty basic way. In fact, we simply connected the MOON 861 to the MOON 891 and connected the duo to the TAD Evolution Two and started playing music. So aside from the heavy lifting (the 861 weighs over 60Kg!), we were done very quickly!
The reason it can be set-up so easy is that with these two “boxes” and a pair of speakers, you are simply done. In fact, the MOON 891 North Collection pre-amp includes a dac (2x ESS Sabre 9038Pro), streamer and a series of analog inputs, including a nice, comprehensive phono pre-amp. But in fact, with the (very nice!) streamer, you are thus already done.
We connected the MOON 861 balanced to the 891 and then went to the TAD Evolution Two with a pair of Yeti CNT speaker cable (prototype) and later the well-known Van den Hul The Nova. Nothing more is needed in this set-up. And yes: for us reviewers, that’s nice too sometimes!
Solid
We actually keep repeating it with products from MOON: what great build quality! You can feel and sense in everything that this stuff is built to last. Nowhere is there any play to be found. On anything. Everything is thick and solidly constructed: from the volume knob and the power button, to the input and output terminals. You pay a lot of money for these devices. But you really get some value as well.
MOON 891 pre-amp, dac, streamer
let’s start with the MOON 891 North Collection pre-amp (28500 Euros), dac and streamer. The front face has a nice colorful display that remains surprisingly readable at a distance: the text is large enough to still read titles at about 2.5 meters. At the bottom right is the volume in a slightly larger font: nicely done.
The buttons on the front speak for themselves: with setup you enter the menu, where you can adjust inputs (name, volume leveling and ‘hide’, for example). You can also convert the analog input from line level to phono. Phono is switchable between MM and MC, and you can adjust things like capacitance and resistance. We played a few records and it went very well, without a hitch with the STD player with a nice MM cartridge.
Another thing you can do through the setup menu is to pair the remote control. The very nicely designed BRM-1 is brand new and consists of a nice OLED screen around which there is again a dial for volume and input selection.
Pairing the BRM-1 went off without a hitch in our case. What is nice is that there is practically no delay in operation. Volume, input and play/pause/skip are fast and reliable. We have seen that differently with some bluetooth remotes. Great work by MOON here.
We also see two buttons on the front to switch between inputs, a standby button and, of course, volume.
At the rear we see a whole range of inputs and outputs: single ended in (phono / line), balanced in, single ended out, balanced out, two times coaxial and optical in, AES in, HDMI-ARC in, USB and Ethernet and two more connections for an external power supply (optional). Also available is wifi / bluetooth. We did not try that during testing, as we streamed via an Ethernet cable.
Finally, MOON has also adopted a technology that goes by the name of MDB: MOON Damping Base. This is a combination of gel and spring decoupling and is designed to dampen resonances. These resonances (microphonics), in fact, also generate interference.
All in all, the MOON 891 is a very versatile pre-amp, dac, streamer. We can’t really imagine people going short of options.
MOON 861 power amplifier
Let’s go to the MOON 861 North Collection (25000 Euro) power amplifier. This is really a brute. A beast of an amplifier. With 300 watts into 8 Ohms and 600 watts into 4 Ohms (yes, we measured that power too…) nobody is short of power, unless maybe they do something with PA systems and large venues. In a living room, this amplifier just can’t be out of breath. On our TAD, we didn’t feel like the limit was even remotely in sight.
This big, friendly brute puts more than 60 Kg on the scale. Most of it comes from the two large toroidal cores up front. This is also noticeable when lifting. Behind the transformers is a thick plate behind which a series of capacitors are placed. On the sides are the amplifiers placed (against the cooling fins). This is a fairly normal arrangement for a (power) amplifier, but we don’t always see the thick plate between the transformers and the rest of the circuit (against stray fields). Also, MOON just made everything nice and oversized and solid.
On the back we see both balanced and single-ended inputs and, of course, two large terminals for speaker cables. Honestly: these are a bit tight with larger spades. The Cryo spades of the Yeti CNT prototype cable barely fit.
Switching on the MOON 861 can be done via a trigger cable between the 891 and 861, simply with a switch on the front or, of course, via MOONLink. More on that later.
Power supplies and feedback
The heart of any device is the power supply. If the power supply is not quiet, stable and fast, it can never sound really good. This is also the reason why MOON has paid great attention to both the power supply in the 891 and the 861. In the MOON 891 North Collection, we see a hybrid power supply: MHP; MOON Hybrid Power. The input section is powered by the switchmode power supply. The rest of the circuit is fed with the linear power supply. This is because of the filtering effect that a lineair psu has to offer.
Another aspect is that MOON has further developed the dac technology. The new “MDE3 dac” is a combination of fpga reclocking, dual mono dacs (8-channel Sabre 9038pro dacs in mono mode) ultra low jitter clock and of course a very silent power supply.
Also notable is that the MOON 891 is built on a damping plate: MDB. This should not only counter resonances with the help of tuned springs, but also keep the temperature constant, which in turn should help with the final percent aural gain.
Finally, the volume control: M-Ray2. This is, of course, an important part of a preamplifier. MOON does not use a potentiometer. The knob works optically, but know it only sends a signal to a chip that then commands it to adjust the volume. Volume adjustment is entirely analog with a series of resistors. Steps of .0.1dB are possible. So that’s a hell of a lot of resistors: 620 steps to be exact!
With the MOON 861 North Collection power amplifier we see that MOON uses its own transistors, does not use feedback, but only applies a ‘correction’ (MDCA: MOON Distortion Cancelling Amplifier) and that the whole is completely balanced. Just like the 891.
The concept of no global feedback is interesting, because we now know that more feedback isn’t always better. More feedback can result in a dry sounding system. MDCA has been used in other MOON models for some time. In the 891 it has been further refined. In fact, it is – simply explained – a separate circuit that applies signal correction to the output signal.
Check out our interview about the 800 series
MOONLink
Perhaps not everyone knows – and we too were blinking our eyes for a moment when we saw Ethernet on the 861 power amplifier – is that MOON has been integrating MOONLink everywhere for some time. This Ethernet link links compatible MOON devices together, allowing them to communicate with each other. And thus also enable each other. That way everything can be controlled via the app, you can read certain data – status – and, for example, update devices at the touch of a button. Handy.
