Which would you buy?

if it had to be between the two I would opt for the Muse9. But depending what you budget is I would by a mark levinson 390s I have a 39 and It is a great player. It also drives your amp directly it has a preamp section in it. Good Luck

Neither. Electrocompaniet EMC-1. Period.

I did buy the Sony E9000ES, but admit that did not make the comparison against the Muse 9. I have no idea how they compare.

I am totally satisfied with my Sony. It has the best picture quality from DVD that I have experineced to date, and the SACD is a fun new format to play with. A fully modified ART DI/O converter is due to arrive tomorrow. At that point Redbook CD's should be sounding great with it too.

The Muse is a much better redbook cd player than the sony. The Muse is up there with the best one box players-especially the signature version. The sony offers sacd, which, is compelling. The muse is one of the best combo dvd/cd players on the market. If you want a better video section, the camelot roundtable or meridian 596 will better it slightly, but you'll loose some ground on audio.

So...pick the player based on what you want. If you desire SACD, then the sony. If you want tops in redbook cd playbac the Muze...

Out of curiosity, what does the Muse list for ? Sean
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The Muse list for about 4K. Someone has one used on the site for 2800 or so.

I'd buy the Muse (esp. if you can spring for the Signature version). The Sony probably (just a guess) has the better video playback, but with the way video is going, after your pocketbook recovers from buying the Muse, you could buy a $250 Sony DVD player that will probably equal the 9000. The video sections in even the cheapest DVD players coming out now are getting startling good reviews. Or, you might be totally satisfied with the Muse's video output and have an all-in-one player for both purposes that is excellent. -Kirk

You could buy the Sony for $1000 or so and spend another $1000 or more on mods (by Ric Schultz, Stan Warren, Dan Wright, etc). It would still be cheaper than the used Muse 9, possibly better, AND you'd have a great SACD player too.

The Sony DVP s9000es is a fantastic bang-for-buck player. I've owned one for the past year and only recently purchased a Sony SCD-1. Clearly the SCD-1 is a better player as it offers better refinements in virtually every sonic category as it should.

But the s9000es still gets you 8/10th's of the way there if you shutdown all video, digital, and display lights. The video picture is also quite nice. You probably cannot do better for the price.

For $250, Stan Warren (co-founder of PS Audio) can modify the s9000es for a 25% gain in sonic improvements (according to Stan). A friend of a friend who had Stan do the mod said it was more like 40% improvement.

-John