CD with volume control/ no preamp.

Joe, I honestly wish you could hear my CD50 in my system, without a linestage, with the balanced interconnects. Ultimately, it is much better and more cost effective than separates (except for the dCS rig, coupled with a linestage like an ARC R2, CAT Ultimate, BAT VK-50se, CJ ART, etc). And that's about 10 to 15 times the cost of a used CD50. But...I would advise you NOT to go this route, if you don't already own more than 300 CD's, and might soon feel like you're being left behind by SACD or DVD-Audio (and do something like sell all your CD's). Personally, I enjoy vinyl very much, also. My linestage doesn't measure up to the rest of my system, and if I already had one of the very best linestages, I'd just try an upsampling DAC (Perpetual, Bel Canto, MSB, dCS). If you're made of money, just get the dCS, and a $20,000+ preamp...more power to ya. Hope you use ASC traps...the room is oh so important.

I feel that the Resolution Audio CD50 would give the 777 a very tough time, when playing CD's. It only has op amps for the output stage, where the CD50 has bipolar output transistors, similar to what the best linestages have, and is designed to take full benefit of balanced operation, even when using only unbalanced connection (the SCD-1 doesn't do this, and I assume the 777 doesn't). The CD50's output devices run very hot, in class A. This thing is still knocking on the door of the performance of my analog rig, with a Benz Lo4 cartridge (which is in turn blowing away the Glider I used to have). The MIT balanced interconnects are key here, also...But I use even better MIT interconnects with the phono stage, so that doesn't explain why the CD50 is so close behind...

That's partially the Maggies, IMHO. They don't "come alive" at lower playback like an esl. Those have other problems, though. My CD50 has no trouble with dynamics at any volume (has beefy output devices). Using it balanced has increased the output by 6 dB, so that helps too. You could try balanced operation with the Miles, couldn't you?

As I've mentioned elsewhere, the new Boulder 1012 really does look like it might outperform the dCS gear (if it's even close to the claimed performance). TO PJPOLAND: The 6 dB is the overall level increase, but noise is helped quite a bit too, especially by lowering the interconnect's inherent noise. It's mostly a benefit from the common mode rejection of the circuitry itself (in the sending and receiving end), and has a tremendous effect on the noise content of the music while playing...and less of an effect (but still significant) of the "hiss" when music isn't playing (i.e., when you put yur ear right on the tweeter when nothing is playing, etc.).