I trust your ears Jonathan so I'm always interested in your observations. I don't doubt that the bidat by itself is better but if I understand things correctly, a lot of what we're hearing from these units are the mods done to it. Except for the original circuit board, pretty much everything has been changed. So I believe it's similar but nevertheless, the price difference between the two units is about as big as the difference between the Bidat and a used Dac6.
Maril, I have not made comparisions but the unit sounds good to me. But I do use Jena Labs cabling that cost more than the unit itself, which I believe help maximize the capabilities of my Bitstream. I'm maxed out in terms of my budget so I haven't looked too hard in terms of upgrades. I may look into doing some comparisons with some midrange units in the future, but I dream of the Meitner gear and this setup may be good enough until I can afford what I really want, which may be never. I don't know how good the bitstream is compared to others, but it's enjoyable to listen to and I feel the bitstream is good enough that I can concentrate on improving other parts of my system. For the price I paid for it, if I find an upgrade, I'll just keep it for some future use in another system anyways so I'm not worried. I simply didn't want to spend several thousand dollars on a CDP that may be a bit better than the Bitstream but not really up to the standards of what I really want, especially since I want SACD capabilities as well.
