Albert, since you expressed an interest, there are some additional upgrades around to improve the analog stages of these players which have been discussed in various threads-- Stan Warren does some for the 9000ES which Simontju had done (not sure if his player is back yet), and Jerry Ozment has a mod where he bypasses the Sony's analog stage completely and attaches a box to the side with his Audio Logic tubed analog stage (separate power supply for the analog stage as well), which I have had done to my 777ES and think is superb, but costs about $1450 these days, probably more than you paid for the 9000ES. I'm sure there are others available as well. If you don't care about voiding the warranty, there is probably plenty of room for improvement in the analog stages and power supplies of these units. The nice thing is, as is evident from the posts, even in stock form Sony appears to have come up with a decent sounding product.