I've owned the Paganini stack driven by an Esoteric rubidium clock as well as the Elgar Plus stack, the P03D03 etc. I would say that the Esoteric and dCS approach things differently and would not say that the Paganini is superior. The British unit does have tremendous detail retrieval and a clean, fast, dry sound and nice bass. The Esoteric has (if one upsamples CD to DSD) more diffuse sound, nice midbass and a projects a more palpable image. I have never heard any MSB gear.