Stewart, thanks for your thoughtful input. Do you find the Meridian "digital"? One of the reasons I am moving away from the Lexicon is a belief-perhaps misguided-that I can do better in terms of smoothing out the overall sound with a better digital program. What speakers are you using with the Meridian? Do you accept the argument that they make that all sacd/dvda will be in the digitaldomain shortly and therefore their lack of analog bypass is irrelevant? thx Mike.