Hey Trelja........

Oh, one thing I failed to mention(while we are on digital). I did listen to a couple of Sony SACD players over the past year. The SCD-1 and the 9000ES. Neither one of them sold me. I do blame the store(Bryn Mawr Stereo) for at least part of it. They are really big in the Philadelphia region, and sell a good bit of high end equipment(Adcom, Mirage, Sonus Faber, etc.). But, they are a chain. More(MUCH more serious) about making money than presenting good sound. Just a yuppie enclave, for those more interested in HT or impressing their friends. They have good componentry set up with the SACD players, but the rest of the package is lacking. I was really put off by the INORDINATELY SLOW disc initialization of the SCD-1. SACD was nice, not the best I have heard(or even close). CD playback was nothing of note. Auditioned it twice. I did check the 9000ES three times. Basically, the same opinions as the other player, minus the long initialization. Certainly nothing good enough to make me buy yet. And, factoring in the software(or lack thereof), the fact that SACD multichannel is on the horizon, and whether or not the format will come to prominence(or will it be DVD-A or upsampling?). Seemed like too big a gamble for me. I am happier with spending $450 on a player that makes me happy.

Bryn Mawr Stereo is Tweeter Etc. under a different nameplate. Same corporate parent, same products for sale.
A lot of their salespeople are clueless IMHO.

Quite correct Sugarbrie. In fact, they will be officially changing their name in the Philadelphia area to Tweeter this spring. They drill it into your head in these horrendously irritating radio commercials("the wise guys, with wise buys..."). Along with their "assertions" of how great Bose speakers are. The fact that they advertise SO heavily, on so many area radio stations should answer the questions of anyone wondering about the place.

Tralja,I kept a parasound CDP 1000 over the cambridge CD6.I was not impressed with the CD6.If you get a chance to try a CDP 1000 give it a try.Its a real sleeper.I had no problems with mine though I have heard the Transports can be sticky at times the D/A is far better than the $ it sold for would suggest.Parrasound missed their price point on this player.Its a good as any up to 1k player i have heard.

Thanks for filling in the gaps. While i haven't listened to all of those that you did comparisons with, i can agree with the basic statements that you made about the MF gear. It is very clean, clear, detailed, etc.... but just doesn't have any "body" or "warmth" to it. If it was slightly fuller sounding and had a little more "soul", i would LOVE it. As to the NAD cd players, i too agree that they are not the most revealing, etc... but my experience is that they were "quite" smooth and that's what made them "better" than many other "cheapies". Instead of giving you inexpensive "digital hash", they gave you something that had "rounded edges" and sounded relatively warm and in-offensive. Nothing to rave about in terms of absolute performance but something that i would rather live with instead of the typical "abrasiveness" that many other players seem to deliver. In other words, the NAD CD players have the same basic "sonic signature" that the rest of their line offers. As to the Sony SCD-1, my experience is pretty limited. Nonetheless, it was demo'd in a system that probably sold for appr. $100,000 and i was NOT impressed. I thought that the Electrocompaniet blew it out of the water when tested within the same system. Once again, these are all personal opinions and even these might change given different systems and circumstances. Sean
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