The apl players are very nice indeed but you folks are being very milseading by saying it crushes the Meridian 808. There is no digital playback made that can do that period. The machine comes with a factory 5 year warranty to back it up, is upgradable when necessary and is truely amazing. I have the Apl nwo-2 and it is a great player but it doesn't hold a candle to the meridian. I have yet to hear any digital playback that is able to extract so much information from a cd than this player. I wish people would say more accurate responses when someone needs their help. There are way to many variables to consider when asked this question to compare players. Many times stores don't have their equipment set up right in order to do a fair a/b comparison. I will give you a case in point. I went to my local store who sells Mcintosh, ayre, meridian,dcs,wadia, and esoteric to name a few and I wanted to compare some cd players in the identical setup I have at home. Well for one, he had the mcintosh mc501 monos plugged in a normal outlet together. No dedicated lines (very necessary)and regular cheap speaker wire from the 70's. I wanted to buy the ayre c5xe, meridian 808,wadia 861 se( which I still have)esoteric xo1 limited, and the po3/d03 combo, as well as the dcs separtes, but I couldn't really hear that much of a difference. So I took them all home as demos. I have owned all of these units after this test at one point and now only have the meridian and the nwo-2. I was able to take all these home for a week and demo them and I will say that they all were significantly better in my system because of the way it is set up and were all good players and all quite unique in their own way. I could totally hear a significant difference between players. The meridian will rock your world. I have friends and family who come over all the time and when I had the 808 hooked up everyone thought I got a new stereo. It truely changed my system and bought it to another level. Hope this helps you out. It is very important to try everything in you setup. Also realize that the other components must be able to allow you to hear differences otherwose it is very hard to discern between digital playback.
