My budget is $2100 tops (cost of CDXT-SE2)
the tough part is finding the components where you can actually home demo them. I demo'ed a rega dac and it was unimpressive in my system so that made me think that the internal Bryston DAC is good enough thus my quest for a better transport. The 9000ES is good but it is over 10 years old and that makes me think that something up to date would be better. The sony build is very nice...I love the copper cladding!
the tough part is finding the components where you can actually home demo them. I demo'ed a rega dac and it was unimpressive in my system so that made me think that the internal Bryston DAC is good enough thus my quest for a better transport. The 9000ES is good but it is over 10 years old and that makes me think that something up to date would be better. The sony build is very nice...I love the copper cladding!