Forget all of the above. The best transport under $1000, $2000 and more is........are you ready?......Aiwa XC-35M!. This five disc changer, available at Best Buy, costs less than $125.00 I know that this is hard to beleive, so let me explain; I am involved with an audiophile group of 20+ guys from Fla. to Hawaii. We are all ardent high end guys that all have a common designer friend, who builds custom D/A converters for our high end sound systems. One day, one of our buddies decided to see if he could find a cheap Jap CD player that might actually sound O.K., as compared to his $8500 Wadia transport. So he went out and purchaced every mid-fi cd player with an optical output (he would then return each one for a refund within the 15day return policy, after his evaluation). As he did his comparisons, all of the players sucked...except for the Aiwa. It was INDISTIGUISHABLE from the Wadia! Of course, none of us believed it, after all, each of us has sunk thousands of dollars into our digital front ends. So he invited some of the local group to his house to prove it. IT TURNED OUT TO BE TRUE!!!! The whole group has now sold our high end transports for this cheap and dirty, great sounding anomoly. I have purchaced two, just in case the one breaks (for the extra investment 125 bucks, it's a no brainer, who knows when Aiwa changes this player and ruins its magic). Go try this for yourself, you can always return it if it does'nt work. (Note: This is only for D/A converters that sound great with their optical input, and have a high immunity to jitter on their reciever chip...the MSB for example. Due to changes in the architecture of some of the newer delta sigma 24bit designs, these converters actually sound best with a optical digital signal). We are still trying to figure out why this cheap player does such a great job, but in the meantime, are counting the cash from the sale of each of our high end transports. (My buddy with the Wadia has not sold it, he's obviously just way too rich...but the Aiwa is now his primary transport, because of its 5 disc convenience). Again, this is not a joke. Hopefully, some of you guys will take this thread seriously, and save yourself a ton of cash.
