If you had 1500 to 2000$ to spend

What other equipment will you be using?

No matter what you are using, you should spend it all on a single power cord, that's the most important piece of audio equipment. It doesn't matter if you have conditioned/surge protected/cleaned/conditioned the power, and it doesn't matter what other equipment you use, the thing to spend all your money on is the power cords. In fact, try and bump up your budget a little bit.

Expensive power cords are MAGIC, just like Harry Potter.

LOL..Harry Potter. Damn you had me going there.

I almost always go for the used piece. It's the same story of quality vs quantity. Even a slightly older unit with last generation DACs will sound better than higher resolution DACs that are not as good.
Personally, I lean towards Anthem and Sunfire.
Keep in mind that you should not go too old. You will most likely be sacrificing HDMI connections. Component video is quite good, just make sure that's sufficient.

Another vote for Anthem.

@Tpreaves
Quote:"What other equipment will you be using?"

listening room:

17w X 27L x 13H

sources:
Oracle Delphi 4, pierre lurne 2 unipivot tonearm, clearaudio vituoso wood cartrige
Oppo universal player ( plays everything but bluray)
Satellite receivers

amplification
Lehman black cube phono preamp
B&K reference 20 preamp-processor ( soon to be change)
Amp: simaudio and some cheap japanese receiver for surround amplification

speakers
Martin Logan Vantage (front)
Inwall speaker made of Seas woofers and planar tweeter, 6 db/oct x-over)
No sub...for now.

Tv set
32 inch Sharp Aquos

Anthem makes many processors, from the avr20 to the d2.

Sunfire has the grand theater series.

Anthem is nearer than sunfire.

However, classe is even closer, and simaudio is almost in mt backyard.

Any negative and/or positive feedback on those and krell processor ( hts 5.1/7.1)
( s-1000 : out of reach $$$ lol)