Musical Fidelity kw DM 25 Transport and DAC

I have heard it during HiFi Show in London this past October.

One of the worst sounds of the show. With SF Guarnieri Homage, the sound was thin and bright.

I did some shows for MF, they can make good cd players, but MF is not capable of making impressive players. I comparred many MF players with all kinds of Meridian players. When you compare them you know Meridian can make much better cd players than MF can.

I have one. It is superb beyond anything I have ever heard before. I use it with my kW500 amplifier and hear detail with utmost power yet delicacy. There is one bug which has been fixed under warranty - the Philips laser mechanism sometimes objects to dual-layer SACD/CD. There is a Philips-supplied upgrade which MF now use which solves the problem.

I replaced a 6 yr old ARCAM FMJ CD 23 with the MF kw 25 duo nearly 6 months back. While the Arcam FMJ was a solid performer,the MF 25 is in an altoghter different league. Is the MF 25 the best cd playback out there ? Probably not.Given the limited audio choices available to an audiophile in India the MF represents a great buy judged by the yardstick of purchaser happiness. In the context of an all tube/ESL system still in the infant stages of break in, the MF 25 duo is a superb performer. The rest of the gear : Quad 2905s, CJ CT5 preamp, CJ LP70S poweramp, Hydra 6 power conditioner, MBL audio rack and all Cardas cables ( Golden Ref/Golden Cross),Clearaudio Emotion TT with a Project Phono box as phono preamp.I can detail several ways IMHO how the MF, to my ears, is a superior performer to the Arcam eg retreival of detail. In the Natalie Merchant Live concert cd(forget the name)there is a long passage of monologue(Spanish ??) at the end of the cd which I heard for the first time thru the MF.I have owned the cd for nearly 4 years !!My earlier gear while lacking the finesse and musicality of the present system was fairly respectable in its own right eg Bryston 14 BST, B&W CDM 9NT and later ML Odssey etc. I can go on about the delicacy of the upper registers, the bass slam, the overall musicality of the player but I would do less justice tnan the Stereophile review of July 2006, which I agree with.
If you have the good fortune and the circumstances to review every or most highend players out there , then choose what sounds sweetest to your ears but be sure to include the the MF in your short list of must hear demos.
Cheers