Just bought a Sony XA5400ES. Listened to alot of high end SACD players. My demo disc must have been in $300,000 worth of hardware.
The XA5400SA is a good deal for the price. Out of the box it had great mid/low range with good punch on drums. Sounded a bit metallic in the upper ranges which is softening up as I add hours. Real PIA to break this thing in on both RB and SACD and balanced/unbalanced outputs.
The RB is close to my Benchmark DAC-1 when the Sony is used as transport.
Will probably sell mine when I get some dough for an Esoteric P-03/D-03 or EMM. Heard he new EMM TSD1 DAC2 at CES. It sounded so much better than the CDSA SE that I couldn't consider the one box player (which is great).
So for low money I can't see what can beat the XA5400SE on SACD with good RB to boot.