ML no39, Wadia 850, Classe 1.0, or Sony?

The Resolution Audio CD50 is the best buy. They can be had used for around $1600. If you only listen to bright popular music and never to well recorded music, however, then the Wadia's rolled off treble might better equalize today's "translatable to boombox" pop music.

Copland 289.

Go for the Wadia, excellant bass,very clear highs, I havn't listened to the 850,but I own its big brother the 860x,they shoud be similar.

Thanks for the initial comments guys.. I was hopeing someone could shead some light as to how each or any of the four players sound different. I'm sure many have been in my position and have A/B these players head to head and can comment in this way? I don't have a local dealer for Classe or Sony ES and the Wadia and ML dealers are 70 miles apart... Thanks Tom

Have you read reviews of any of these? It might give you some idea of how they perform, although the reviewer usually doesn't compare one directly with another. Sometimes they do...I think it was either The Inner Ear, or The Audiophile Voice that reviewed the CD50 about a year ago. (There are many others for it.) The Wadia 850 was reviewed in Stereophile about 2 years ago. I'm not sure about the Classe player, but SPHL reviewed the Classe DAC-1 about 5 years ago. There are many reviews of the Sony just about everywhere. I don't recall seeing any of the ML 39, but I'm sure there are several.