Produce sweet musical high yet accompanied by bass.

Rather aged, might not be the best CD player currently. A love it or hate it affair due to its sheer transparency. BEWARE: ACCURATE SOUNDS REPRODUCTION: keep bad recordings CD away.... Question is: Will the rest of your system be the weakest link?

If clarity and accurate sounds reproduction is what you want. Hunt no more. If classical is what you hate, listen to it classical using X-ray will change your taste of music towards classical. Dont get me wrong, this CD player has a very clear transparent sound reproduction giving superb sounstage that will smack right in front of your face for all type of music as well. This CDP will last me "forever" unless it die. Hope not :) MF X-ray, Arcam FMJA22, PSS Octet IC, Mordaunt Short 908, QED silveranniversary biwire - High, Kimber 8TC low.

Similar Products Used:

Marantz CD6000KI (my friend''''s not mine) Marantz CD6000OSE (auditioned) Rotel CD player (auditioned)

Absolutely stunning clarity!
Really neat packaging.
Price is remarkable for a product this good!

None.

Equipment:

MF X-RAY
MF X-A1 amp
CLS IIz speakers
Stax SR-34 headphones

This thing is a recording engineer's worst nightmare come true! I can't criticise the X-RAY, it reveals absolutely everything (and I mean EVERYTHING...) about the recording, which is exactly what it is supposed to do. My criticism is of the poor quality of some of the recordings that now seriously bug me! I can hear mic preamps overloading, studio movement sounds, etc!
On the other hand I have never heard some recordings sound so stunning - John Rutter's "All things bright and beautiful" and "Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace" on his "Requiem, five anthems" CD are simply outstanding! The percussion on Chris Rea's "Road to Hell" album (interesting combination there...) has to be heard to be believed! And Sharon Isbin's playing of "Romanza" on her "Dreams of a World" album sounded like she was playing in the room just for me (sigh...), down to the sound of her fingernails on the guitar strings (double sigh)!

Five stars, without any question at all!

Detail, imaging and ambient information. Major improvement over my 10-year old Mission 16-bit player - and pretty close to my Meridian 500/566 combo.

Not much for a £800 product. Fit and finish on the front panel could improve a bit - but I'm just being picky. As I write this I'm listening to Ladysmith Black Mambazo and they could be in the room. The only other thing is that they are stylistically very different from the average box. Are you willing to buy the rest to match appearances?

If you're in the market - check out the Arcam 9 CD deck and the FMJ variant - but nothing else I heard in the UK came close at the price.

Similar Products Used:

Just got the xp-100 pre-amp (see above comments) - a great match to the Rotel RB991 power amp. See recent Stereophile review.If you guys can't get the pre-amp in the States - why on earth not? This is a great product - same circuit as the Nuvista pre-amp with J-FETs instead. Separate power supply box and built like a tank.

The X-Ray must be the reference in its class. It elictits incredible detail from CDs, yet it retains its musicality and neutrality.

None at this price. Idiosyncratic appearance may not be to everyone's taste.

The X-Ray is able to render a very realistic and stable sound stage that retains its focus, resolution and transparancy throughout complex musical passages. I disagree with one of the other reviewers. The sound is neutral, but definitvely not cold. In fact, the top end is exceptionally smooth and the base fast, realistic and very controlled.

build

the loading draw does not come out far enough! what a design fault!!! four more mil's and a CD would slide in without obstruction!

First of all I would like to say that most listeners I hear complain about their equipment do not or have not had the experience of live performances. And I believe their reviews to be irrelevant.

I have searched for many years for a system that would not blow the bank and perform similar to the bench mark systems I had heard. The X-ray is built by people who not only strive for quality, but also understand that not everybody who likes quality is in the upper socio-economic society!

I believe that people who have listened to the X-ray and found it disappointing should blame the recording or the other parts of the HI-FI. One review made a comment about the rest of the system being "up to it". This is a very good point! I have found the player to be extremely truthful in it's re-production. Bad recordings sound bad and good sound good. The human ear can only hear so much! I hear alot of live classical music and musical performances and the X-ray is very accurate in reproduction. I commend MF for their achievement and look forward to more well recorded performances to be heard through my 'semi budget system'.

System this week:
MF XA-1
MF X-RAY
DALI 4A MK II
and some ""whoppin big"" cables!!!

Stunning sound, build quality, top notch dealer

Boy, I'm not sure about weaknesses, maybe HDCD or DVD-A, but not much

This may be the last Cd-Player I purchase for a while, which is unusual for me. Not that I hated all my previous CD-Players, but I seem to have developed this pattern. I buy a CD Player, fall in love with it, then sell it (man I love ebay) within a year.

Because of the miracle of the internet, I'm able to buy a new CD player, listen to it for several months and then sell it at ebay auction and often time not loose money. I'm not trying to be pompous here, but this buy/sell arangement has enable and otherwise middle-class type guy (me) to try and own several popular CD-players, often time owning several of them at one time. Bare with me, please.

My first "high-end" CD-Player was the Rega Planet, great peice of equipement. This was the 1st piece of digital hardware that I could tollerate for more than 20 minutes. Prior to this, I had just the garden variety, mass-market stuff, Yamaha, JVC, and so on. With the Rega, the harshness was gone, but so was some of the excitement, and dynamics. Close, but no cigar. I sold the Rega and bought the McIntosh 7005. Now this is a CD-player, not harshness, plenty of dynamics, but not quite there in the detail department. Closer, but still no cigar.

After the Mac, I briefly owned a Audio Alchemy player (don't remember the model). This was better than mass market, but not as good as either the Rega or McIntosh. Someone had it on Ebay for cheap and I couldn't resist, but I sold it none the less.

Next, was the Musical Fidelity A3-Cd player. This player was heads and shoulders better than anything I had ever heard or owned. First the first time, I was noticed the sound of Eric Clapton banging his accoustic guitar against his folding chair on the Unplugged CD. The detail on the A3-Cd is second to none. This guy had lots of dynamics, and an overall, very involving sound. This only draw back was that it was not very forgiving to the combination of crappy recordings and revealing speakers. During the time I Owned the A3-CD player, I also had a pair of Vandersteen 2ce signatures and a Musical Fidelity A3 amp. With very good recordings, it was absolute nirvana. With crappy recordings, it was... crappy. That's the price you pay for detail. There's no getting around it.

My wife got "downsized" from her job, so the A3 amp, the A3-Cd player and the Vandersteens went to Ebay. Easy come, easy go. A few months later, (new jobs for both of us) I was in the market for audio stuff. By now, I was completely hooked on Musical Fidelity and AudioAdvisor.com (these guys are great, great service, good prices and a no hassle return policy). To be just a little different, I got the Xa-1 amp and matching X-ray cd player, which uses the same electronics as the A3 (exact same no difference). For speakers, I picked up a pair of Gallo Nucleous References. This all works perfect together, the Gallos are are a little less revealing than the Vandersteens and the end result is that the X-ray always sound right, except for really, I mean really bad recordings.

The last things I want to mention, for those of you who are still with me, have to do with a few "audiophile" rumors. The first of which has to do with the sound differences between the A3 and the X-ray. Some consumer reviews claim that the A3 sounds better than the X-ray. Poppy cock!!

I've had both of these guys in my living room, at the same time, they sound identical, period.

The last rumour has to do with a "harshness or thin sounding quality". Both the A3 and the X-Ray need a lot of time to break in. On both players, the first 200 hours were pure pain. Electronics do need time to settle and these cd-players are no exception.

In closing, if you buy an X-ray, please, turn it on, put in an old Cd, press the play button and walk away... for a week. After than... you'll love it.

Similar Products Used:

Musical Fidelity A3-CD, Rega Planet, McIntosh 7005, Audio Alchemy. etc.

I picked up an X-Ray, X-10D, X-Cans and Sennheiser 600's as my headphone system for the office. The X-Ray (and this combination) has and amazing amount of clarity, resolution and granularity.
In fact, it has too much. Recordings I used to love to listen to now have their flaws revealed. For example, on Diana Krall's latest CD you can hear some compander or other device kicking in everytime the vocal track picks up and dies out. On Oscar Petersen's "If You Could See Me Now", you can hear Oscar humming and breathing and making other distracting noise so clearly that I find myself listening to those noises rather than the music. On a Deutche Grammaphone recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, I can resolve out what sounds like a conversation in german during the build up of the first movement.

For louder passages and other music - Talking Heads for example - this is not a problem. But it kinda bursts the bubble of perfect expectation and flawless engineering of recordings. But delusions are meant to be destroyed.

The X-Ray reveals the truth.

On one hand, I want to say, "Wow. This is really cool. That information is there, on the disk, and I, with my superior hardware, am able to delve this deep into the bits and bytes and extract these artifacts."

On the other hand, I want to say, "Bummer. My hardware has ruined my enjoyment of some of my favourite recordings."

In the end "Vertas Omnia Vincit". Truth conquers all. As much as I love and aspire to the truth is as high as I can rank the X-Ray. Diminishing one star for destroying my delusions.

As the others write, it plays the last bit of information buried in the disk. Due to newly developed ultra low impedance circuit, you'd make out all of things happened in the studio.
BUT......
Although I can understand X-RAY's technical advantage, when it comes to mildness and warmth of the sound, it sound too much "metalic". If you love vocal(especialy women Jazz vocal), you'd feel the sound of XRAY is a little thin or cold.
Now I'm planning to replace it to other warmy sound player.

Industrial design

44kHz, 16 bit limitations of CD audio

I would take Mr Conboy's remarks with a grain of salt, since he wants to justify the considerable outlay he made for the player. That said, I have no reason to doubt the quality of the X-Ray, and believe it is held back primarily by the limitations of CD audio.

Similar Products Used:

Rotel RCD 971 (similar Burr-Brown DACs)

Good value for money. Neither adds nor takes away. Try it with a statmat for best performance.

Can't find any major problems

Very hard to beat for value. Having read all the reviews, I suspect that the other components in the system will colour appreciation of this player. I am running it with a Hovland HP100 pre-amp. Bryston 4bST and Zingali studio monitors. Gives a very true reproduction of both voice and instruments. It reproduces drums accurately, (compared it with my Sonor 6 piece kit).It does not always get the soundstage quite right, but hell, for the price it takes some beating. However, if you really want to hear it at its best, you've got to try putting in a Ringmat CDI blue statmat on top of the CD. Sounds crazy I know, why should a stupid piece of plastic on top of the CD improve the sound? It does believe me!! I recently auditioned the Chord 64 DAC with the X-ray and it sounded worse than the X-Ray with the statmat. Saved myself over $2500.