When taking advice on this topic, don't listen to anyone's comparison of two different units UNLESS they have played them side by side, at the same time, in the same system, with the same disk, with a level-matched preamp. Too often you'll hear "XYZ is sooooo much better than abc" by someone who may never even have heard both of them, or not in the same system, let alone the rest of it. Often they will sound very similar. The only definitive review I have seen (and I'm sorry I don't recall where) was a session at Mike Lavigne's where they did properly compare two players (in this case it was the Oppo as well) with his Playback Design piece at $15k, and while they said the latter was better the Oppo still sounded very good. I have compared (side by side) the Ayre CX-5 against the Meridian G08, the Oppo against a cheaper Denon, a Sony SCD-777ES against some other cheaper players, and always the sound was much more similar than it was different. Don't always buy the hype.
