if you have been playing lots of music (and enjoying it) on the arcam, keep your money. except for esoteric design and/or build quality, the vast majority of improvements in digital sound have come from the software, not the hardware. an ancient mac,krell,classe,proceed,revox,arcam-delta,quad,linn or other comparable brand sounds outstanding with most newly mastered redbook cd's. any can be purchased for far less than today's so-called state of the art units. by the way, those players in the 4 to 8k range won't make those old, poorly mastered cd's sound any more satisfying than they already do. many of the complaints about digital playback in its first 20 years, were the by-product of rushing software into the marketplace before the industry's producers and sound engineers had mastered the technology. it was a painful learning curve. designers and engineers on the hardware side know that the differences in hardware performance are almost entirely determined by your listening room, your loudspeakers and certainly the quality of the cd itself. there are lots of great players today too, but not one of which is anywhere near this price range unless you are paying for a conversation piece.
