Lee- here's a snippet from that review I spoke of- "take the excellent Naxos recoridng of the elgar piano quintet for example. I could hear no diffrence in the two machines' extreme top ends despite my know abouth the early rolloff of the Wadia filter. The 850 was actually just a tad brighter than the 39, which brought the higher intruments of the string quartest a bit more forward in the mix. Peter Donohoes's piano, however, which is audibly more distant in the soundstage, sounded both slightly bettter defined spatially via the Wadia, and had greater subjective bass extension. As aresult, the Levinson's presentation had slightly reduced authority and soundstage depth, though it was overall rather smoother sounding . The Wadia gave a more transparent view into the recorded image, though it could occasionally sound just a bit strident. But the most improtant (though still small) diffrence for me was how the 850 more delicately revealed Donohoes's pedaling of bass notes at the reprise of the big syncopated tune in the work's concluding Allegro. The Levinson sounded more homogeneous, but ultimately a little less informative". These words were from John Atkinson. Hope this helps -Ryan
