should everyone just order emm?

Jtinn, are you familiar with the Audio Synthesis DAX Discrete Variable? It excels at all the qualities you mention regarding the Meitner unit; plus it offers the added benefit of an exceptional digital volume control.

Tbg: That is not fair. I am very objective and thought I answered in an extremely objective manner.

Norm, your biases in terms of listneing are very different than most of the people I run across. Most people I speak with do not like horns and SET's for long term listening. They like it initially for the beauty, but tire very quickly of the highly colored sound. You seem to really enjoy that kind of sound. Understand, there is nothing wrong with that. It is just your preference.

Tucker does very nice work and I enjoy the sound of his gear, albeit, it is not what I look for in my perception of accurate reproduction.

Unclejeff: I too grind my teeth very badly. I have a dentist appointment and am getting fitted for a night guard. My understanding is that continued grinding could possibly damage the occular nerve.

Wellfred: While I am not a fan of digital volume controls and can only equate the loss of "bits" or information (resolution) to prior experiences with digital volume controlled players, I do not have any real personal experience with the DAX in my system. Am I mistaken, or does the Audio Synthesis convert SACD back to PCM?

The EMM Labs converts all PCM recordings to 5.6 mHz (twice DSD) and the DCC 2 has an analog volume (remote) control as well as multiple analog inputs. At first take, it appears fairly expensive, but when you factor in the built in 2 channel (Switchman) preamp, some find it quite a bargain.

If you would like to do a comparison, let me know, I might have someone in your area who would be interested in participating.

If the people who own the equipment in question are not to be believed because they will defend their purchase, this means we can trust neither the owners of Emm Labs nor the owners of the modified Denon player. If people fail to tell you when they make unfortunate purchases, this could also include people who purchased a modified DVD player for their digital front end or traded in their Emm Labs gear for said gear. I think we need to be careful where we shoot -- the bounce-back will getcha every time. So, if no one can be trusted what does that mean? It means we all have to do our own listening and choose the products that sound best to us. One person's syrup may not work for everyone and what looks like a risk to some will look like a safe bet to others. What looks like a trend could be a trend, but it could also be a bunch of people expressing joy and spreading good news. And, speaking of trends, I have noticed another trend. Take a low-end piece of gear, like a DVD player or home theater receiver, swap out a few parts and claim it beats gear costing 10 to 20 times as much. Speaking of risk, what do you think you can get for a used Denon DVD player with $3,000 worth of mods? How many production runs have there been? Who is going to fix your modded Denon if it breaks after a year or two? See, everything is relative. But, my experience has been that I would rather have the money back that I spent on the lower cost players I bought one the way to the Emm Labs gear.

Jtinn, I am not positive, but I believe that SACD's are converted to PCM. I presume that the DAX Discrete volume control succeeds so magnificently because of the massive oversampling.

I am pretty illiterate with regards to the technology so I will quote from the Audio Synthesis website directly.

"Oversampling for simplicity
In all of our audio designs we have always prioritised the simplicity of the analogue domain. Our world famous PASSION series of L-pad Vishay Bulk-Foil attenuators illustrate the importance of minimising analogue complexity to achieve essential levels of realism - otherwise lost forever by passage through the usual myriad of analogue components.

Here in DAX Discrete we have chosen to spend considerably more design effort in the digital domain including automatically oversampling the highest resolution 24 bit input data, up, to over 700kHz, in order to eliminate any active analogue electronics in the audio path. This achievement carries an expensive digital overhead - but the gains in emotional involvement are entirely priceless."

All I can say is that it works very well. In order for me to listen late into the evening I am forced to listen at very low volumes. I do not notice any loss of resolution when listening at these low volumes. I would love to compare the two units directly sometime. I will contact you privately within the next couple of months to see what can be arranged. Thanks for the offer.

Here is the link to the complete Audio Synthesis description for their product. It's pretty interesting reading.

Audio Synthesis DAX Discrete