Murrayp, the world of reference level, along with digital gear in general, DACS has come along way in the last ten years.
I used to use a Purcell in my system and it made a great inprovement with no down side at all. Some people still disagree regarding different sampling rates, but many great DACS use some type of up-sampling approach with great results.
You did not mention if SACD is important to you or are you mainly interested in redbook? If redbook is your major pursuit, I would recommend you take a look at a thread, Reference DACS: An overall perspective, that I started that contains a great amount of information concerning the different sonics of the best CDP's and DAC's that are the most current digital front ends on the market today.
You left off your list such great digital pieces such as Accustic Arts, the new reference from Audio Research, Ensemble, Audiomat and many others, that have much to offer at the reference level.
I used to use a Purcell in my system and it made a great inprovement with no down side at all. Some people still disagree regarding different sampling rates, but many great DACS use some type of up-sampling approach with great results.
You did not mention if SACD is important to you or are you mainly interested in redbook? If redbook is your major pursuit, I would recommend you take a look at a thread, Reference DACS: An overall perspective, that I started that contains a great amount of information concerning the different sonics of the best CDP's and DAC's that are the most current digital front ends on the market today.
You left off your list such great digital pieces such as Accustic Arts, the new reference from Audio Research, Ensemble, Audiomat and many others, that have much to offer at the reference level.