Best Sounding CD / SACD player under 15K

I had an audio aero capitole se mk ii , an mbl 1621 plus dac, , Abington research, now have tried and kept audio horizon reference dac, with an esound e5 platinum ref cdp turned into transport only all modified with new caps ,and bybee music rails hooked to a battery powered supply, findings as follows , very very. Very low noise floor, weight in bottom ,tight strong ,forceful, timber on instruments ie acoustic guitar very scary ,harmonic textures likemthis never heard liquid musicality like this on other transports or cdp

Rok2id - Yes indeed such exist.

I use computer audio exclusively myself but the best actual player I have heard is a Playback Designs MPS-5. I also own the MPD-3 and IMHO it is very close to the MPS-5 - certainly not the price difference better. I would get the MPS-3 and put the difference towards getting better speakers.

Thanks
Bill

I just picked up an Esoteric K-03 which is simply extraordinary.

Imho, cd drives (no matter how good) are going the way of the dodo and have now been superceded by high res music streamed from servers via AES3 and NAS over ethernet. For example, with proper buffering in the dac, streaming over ethernet does not simply 'tackle' jitter, by it's very nature it eliminates jitter altogether because the clock signal is non-existant and because the transfer method has no bandwidth problems and carries no ground. This means that the digital transmission arrives, is buffered and is converted with no jitter artifacts and no accumulated noise issues. It also means that there are essentially no limitations on the resolution of the digital file itself, at least as far as current file formats are concerned. Not even streaming via AES3 can achieve that since the clock is embedded in the digital audio data stream. Whenever it gets moved, goes through a connector, is exposed to low frequency noise or a million other things, it has the potential to induce or increase jitter.

Pavpet-

did you ever demo the Audio Aero LaFontaine?