Review: APL Hi Fi NWO 4.0 Master Edition CD Player

I understand Drubin. I am not inclined to lengthy epic reviews. My comparison is with the NWO 3.0 GO which is a few models back. Until we have perfect components, there is room for improvement. I have no opinion of how the NWO Master may outperform the NWO 3.0 SE or NWO 4.0 SE models. I leave that to others.

Your commentary and this response should be moved into another thread since the issue you pose is generic to high end and not exclusive to the NWO-M.

I completey agree with Hifirabbit. The M is incredible. I was lucky enough to be able to compare my M to a 4.0SE in my system with the same cables, amps and speakers. It blew the 4.0SE away--completely. it has so much more musical yet has more detail, so much so that there rally was no comparison. It basically made the 4.0SE seem almost like a boom box. I really do not understand how Alex was able to find so much improvement in the 4.0Se but he did, and I am delighted!

I have always felt that Alex Peychev was and is a gifted individual.I have owned his creations from the APL 3910 Denon CDP to his latest and greatest CDP /DAC-The NWO-M.
This incarnation of his talent and love of music just "gets it right"
These thoughts are totally subjective and based solely on my opinion.
I listen to various genres of music in many different venues-the NWO-M in my system and to my ears just sounds"live"-if the recording is faithful to the music- the reproduction of the event via The M, has brought both a smile and a tear to my face.
If one wants to see/hear that it is possible for digital to equal vinyl then one should seek out an opportunity to listen to an APL NWO-M.
I have intentionally not gotten into comparisons or a discussion laced with terminology as I'm not seeking converts or proclaiming that the NWO-M is the unequivocally best-I have not hear all the SOTA pieces out there.
What I will say is that this product is incredible and has freed the soul of music from the 1 and 0 of digital recording-at least to my ears and my wife's

If I sound like a fan of Alex-I am and consider myself most fortunate to speak from 1st hand experience.

I must admit that when Alex Peychev announced the NWO-M upgrade, I hesitated because I have been very happy with my NWO-4.0SE and didn't feel a need for an upgrade. I expressed my satisfaction with the 4.0SE with many superlatives in an Audiogon review. However, Alex assured me the "M" version (M is short for Master) is a significant upgrade to the 4.0SE. In all previous upgrades I got from him, he always delivered greater sonic improvements than he promised. So, I sent my player in.....Got it back in less than 2 weeks....And once again Alex exceeded my sonic expectations.

Right out of the box, the NWO-M sounded more relaxed than my fully burnt-in 4.0SE. My lady friend and I were totally captivated by the more natural and effortless flow of music. I do not recall hearing such magical fluidity produced by any audio system I had an opportunity to listen to.

It now has about 150 hours of playing time and I continue being astounded at the increased level of realism and beauty.

The highs are sweeter....much sweeter....cleaner, more delicate and with greater sparkle. If there are other digital or vinyl systems that can match or better M's natural sparkle and shimmer, I have not heard them.

The bass is simply awesome. Cleaner, tighter and more tuneful. The harmonic texture is more palpable and has more nuanced sonic hues.

The midrange is also significantly improved. In a word: glorious. On the NWO-M, the human voice is smoother, warmer and more expressive.

I am continually amazed at the naturalness of the transients, the improved focus, the overall cleanliness, and the expanded soundstage floating effortlessly....very solid yet wispy when called for.

The NWO-4.0SE took 500 hours of playing time for each format to burn-in. That suggests the NWO-M may have more room for improvement and refinement....Stay tuned. In the meantime, Alex's masterpiece has already lived up to its name, the Master.

Kudos to Alex!

After a number of years, I finally decided to upgrade to the latest APL 1-box digital solution, in this case, the NWO-M. It replaces my 3 box Esoteric Ux-1pi Transport/ Esoteric Rubidium clock/APL prototype NWO-4.0 Super-DAC.

Totally unbroken-in, out of the box, its not really even close to what I had - voices and instruments have an even more palpable weight - as lifelike as I've ever heard, anywhere at any price. Pretty special, since I know its just going to get lots better as the different formats break-in. Won't be doing any critical listening for weeks, but it sure is fun to listen to NOW!!

SACD also benefits from the asynchronus upsampling at 195KHz/32 bit. While I don't pretend to understand even a fraction of the engineering that went into this piece, I DO know what I'm hearing, which is quite nice, even at this very, very early stage.

There is also now a facility outside of Chicago that has done and will do repair work for APL, both in and out of warranty. I've talked to them to confirm this and they do lots of warranty work for the major brands, so they are real. This helped my decision to finally do the 1 Box ultimate APL NWO upgrade. So far, this seems to be a very wise decision :-)