Interesting. It happens that I picked up a Sony NS775 which is $129 at Amazon, just for kicks. It does a really nice job on a secondary system I have in my office. In fact, I also just received a Musical Fidelity X10 V3, the little analog buffer stage they make. I have it inline with the Sony and an Onkyo receiver and it sounds damn good. Unfortunately it has a captive lampwire as a power cord, but I'm looking forward to moving things over to my main system. Maybe something modded is the way to go.
Peter
Peter