Hifimaniac,
I am way late in offering some commentary - my apologies.
At this point, there's about 100 hours on it. The 1st 50 hours were quite low on the wow factor (quoting Darell Sheets...). Had me wondering what I just spent all this dough on. Safe to say shortly thereafter a noticeable front-to-back depth started to reveal itself. What really came out was (is) this extreme attention to the minutia, the little stuff that had me going to the front door to see who was knocking kinda stuff. When the source material hits all the marks - e.g. The Blind Boys of Alabama "Spirit of the Century", the CD5s brings out the kind of emotion that raises the proverbial hair on the back of one's neck. For a 100% tube compliment, bass is certainly not in any short supply. This report must also state that the speaker cables and and interconnects are a large part and parallel the performance attributes of the CD-5s. They are the 10th Anniversary Series Nebula cables from Dynamic Design. Unbelievable. But that's another report. The only and I mean only thing sonically that I'd have me ntion is that the reproduction of those sharp, 90 degree/square-edged reproduction of base drum or more specifically electronic bass beats. I'd describe them as being akin to a 1/2 inch radius. I've been a life-long solid state user and this is my first, real foray into the tube lide. Good examples are found on the first two Moby CD's. It is safe to say this will never leave my possession. It's that good.
Physical Cons:
The remote runs eats batteries once every 3 months. Wayyyy too many buttons for a devoted two-channel prodigy. It also has to re-calibrate almost every time I use it. The remote has to be "read" by the main unit. A little more rare is when taking out a CD that had 4 tracks, for example, when putting a new one in with 8-10 tracks, it still reads only 4 tracks. I am going to write Jerry at Ayon and find out what the Pilot is doing wrong that's likely corrupting the read. One other item is that there's a "Fixed" volume button on the remote. If you're not careful and hit it - volume is set at 0dB. Shocks the hell out of you. Thankfully, my system is robust enough to handle it.
Hope that helps.
Scott