several routes to take to digital heaven?

Ozfly, thanks for your input; i recently visited the site, www.referenceaudiomods.com, where it discussed its mods of several good transports (in their time), and how its mods moves them into the $10,000 range, particularly the meridian and philips transports.

Whoa! Nice site. You're talking about starting with some pretty nice base units and some extensive mods. So moving up a couple of major price points might indeed put you in the $5-$10k range for comparisons. Thanks for pointing out the site. Good luck.

Mig007, I hope that you did not take offense at my tepid attempt at humor. In fact, I enjoy digital media quite a lot and listen to it as much as LPs. Much of this of course is due to being unable to source much new music on LP. The last few years have seen a terrific improvement in the quality of red book recording and playback. The EAD transports represent an excellent value used, however service may be a problem at this point. I have never owned one but have been most impressed with three that I have heard in friends systems. Good luck in your hunt for the Holy Grail. And by the by I never liked camp.

Viridian, you can rest assured I took no offense; all these sites are really just to have conversations on common subjects; I could never take offense and have used your phrase many times in other areas and smiled when I read yours. I respect your support of vinyl; I cannot get past what I consider laborious and minute preparations to play vinyl and any crackling pop and other noises drive me up the wall as much as fingernails raked across a blackboard; I mentioned Bob Stuart's interviews because his take is no different than those who stand for the proposition that vinyl is the truth and digital is the red-haired stepchild, except in reverse. By the way, I loved camp; went four years to Camp Fuller in Rhode Island, 1963-1967, which provided me with some of my fondest memories of my childhood.