For those who have listened to the Playback Designs MPS-5 Player, it did a very poor job on Red Book prior to the summer of 2011 when the player had a major firmware upgrade
for Red Book last summer. The firmware upgrade is downloadable from the internet. My experience with the player was mostly with SACD's. The performance and sound quality from SACD is phenomenal. Not thin or cold, but rich, warm, organic, full and scary dynamic's. With the firmware upgrade Red Book sounds great. SACD becoming a dead thing ? No way..the new SACD technology known as SHM-SACD has taken the SACD format to a whole new level and Acoustic Sounds in Kansas is selling these discs like crazy..they sell for $60.00 a disc..but when you listen you won't hesitate that they are worth every penny.
Michael Fremer's review in the February 2010 issue of Stereophile
was prior to the firmware upgrade and his gripe was with Red Book. Not SACD. " As an SACD player, the MPS-5 is, or is very close to the best I've heard " Michael Fremer