Can any player challenge Audio Aero Prestige SE ?

YES: GNSC Ref. Level modded Wadia 581 beats the hell out of the AA Prestige SE - we made an extensive two weekend shoot-out with several top notch players. The AA came in 3rd. after the DCS P-8i and the Wadia.

Mrtennis: there is not need to specify. The 581 with the GNSC mod. makes everything a lot better than the AA. If it would have been a close call I would have specified..

Mrtennis: no you would have come to the same conclusion. Base line controll of the 581 is simply stellar and lets the AA sound thin and much less controlled.

The transparency and detail retrieval with the 581 is not another level but a nother planet. We heard things (esp. when listening to life recoridings (my wife is a professional singer in a well renowned choir) that we couldn´t with the Prestige. Micro and makro dynamiks were much better too.

Imageing and focus of instruments as well the accurate placing in the room is superb with the 581 and good with the AA. last but least the design and the build quality of the 581´s case work and remote a MILES better.

I know pretty well the AA sound and it´s strength and it weaknesses as I have had a modded (from the geram distributor who installed the AA in my system) AA Capitole MK II SE. The unit was nice but was easily topped by the Accuphase DP-78 and a RAM modded UX-3 SE (which are at least a HUGE step underneath the GNSC modded 581).

Mrtennis: don´t really get your question ? Resolving and controll can go greatly hand in hand (e.g. Wadia, Lamm, Boulder, DartZeel, CAT, Kondo) and don´t have to exclude each other.

Audiooracle: you are heartly invited to our next shoout-out in May in Hamburg, Germany. I have to agree with some of your findings: AA players are top notch, with some reliability issues and a crap remote (as with most of the players, except Esoteric and the optional Wadia metal remote). System dependency is as always a great issue as well as cabelling etc. We were aware of that fact as two of the guys where dealers themselves.
The AA Prestige in our shoot-out came with Shun Mook resonance damping, a Black-Cap upgrade and was connected with all Omega Micro (active planar) cabelling - the same set-up that was used at several trade shows were AA partnered with Ascendo and CAT. The unit was very well played-in.
All players except the GNSC modded Wadia had more than 500+ hours on them. The Wadia roughly 200.
All of us were simply blown away from the performance of the Wadia and two of my friends exchanged their players (AA Prestige SE and Esoteric X-01) after the shoot-out with the Wadia which is quite a bold statement as they run systems in the above US $ 80.000,00 range.
The nice thing is that this hobby keeps a lot room for any taste and thats fine with me and good for the industry. But nevertheless there are always some manufacturerer who stand a top of the crowd and this for sure is AA, Wadia, CAT, Boulder, Ayon, German Physics, Barclay, ACapella just to name a few.
Happy listening!

Adiooracle: I believe at the level we are talking about (AA Prestige, Esoteric X-01 Ltd., Wadia 581i etc.) it´s much a matter of taste and system synergy.

In my system used during shoot-out the GNSC modded 581 was a CLEAR winner over the competition. The Ayre C-5xe I´m using currently is a very good player for the money but reaches probably just 60% of the Wadias performance. It´s that good and will be replaced with the forthcoming Wadia 781i or the new EMMLabs CDSA. The latter one is a killer as well..