Jolida 1501RC hybrid integrated vs. Rogue's Sphinx

Some of the Jolida stuff certainly isn't awful (I had and liked their JD100A long ago), which can't be said of a lot of chinese gear, but anything Rogue will be a big step up in build quality and support...plus their gear sounds excellent. With all the legal mess going on between the 2 entities claiming the name "Jolida", I wouldn't be certain of support there.

Furthermore, stuff from China is getting to be as expensive as (or even MORE than) similarly spec'd designed-and-built-in-USA Rogue gear. Lots of cash going to glorified middlemen with the china gear. I don't see the logic in considering china-fi under those circumstances.

The CM is great, and for my speakers I'll pick the CM over SS every time. However, my friend's shop has a Sphinx hooked up to Kingsound Prince electrostatic panels, and it just struck me as a really sweet combo. In fact it seemed a bit better of a match than the CM that was hooked up previously (the CM got sold).

I wouldn't expect that to be typical; it may be a electrostat thing -- and that being said, the panels aren't really my thing, either, though they do have their strong points. Speaker-to-amp matching does matter; were I in your shoes I'd roll the dice on the CM over the Sphinx.

Also, I have to reinforce that while the CM's (and I assume the Sphinx's) built-in phono stages are good starter or stopgap solutions, they'll increasingly become a bottleneck once you've upgraded your analog rig to say the $1K table/arm/cart level. It's very worthwhile it upgrade to an outboard stage at that point, which of course includes Rogue's own options. The 99 Magnum's built-in tube phono stage is also very good, btw, so I can't lump it in with the other built-ins.