Musical Fidelity kw DM 25 Transport and DAC


Hi, does anybody have any experience with the Musical Fidelity kw DM 25 Transport and DAC?

Ken
kjgp
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
just ignore what elberoth2 said about it. This guy is anti M.F. type of person. I know his posts from other forums. KW DM25 is a good value for money product.