The best CD Player for the money

I love my Modwright Sony 5400 and have heard great things about the Ear Acute 3 and Romulus CD players...

@Budburma, Thanks for your kind words. I've been reading up on the Mini 2's recently . They were an all-out effort by Magico at the time to build a statement stand-mount & even today look extremely solid and beautifully built. There is only about a $2k difference 2nd hand between the Mini 1's & Mini 2's, so i'd wait for a pair of Mini 2's to come up at the right price.

I use my Romulus as a cdp & haven't used the dac with any external sources. But the Romulus is essentially a full Pandora dac with a drive which is exactly the way Hans Ole approached the SCD-010/025.

I'm also aiming to reduce my box count & focus on digital. Initially when I get my SCD-025 I will run it as a cdp, but I plan on adding a high end server in future & using the SCD-025 mainly as a dac feeding the server, or for gtg's.

@Melbguy1-The Minis's astonishingly substantial and graceful in appearance at the same time. I am sure they are also a sonic force with which to be reckoned.

Previously, my AMR CD77.1 served as player and USB DAC and was very capable. I am not convinced that USB is the best interface. I have a new server, a bespoke Music Vault Diamond with an ingenious solution straight to AES/BSU. It rip with dB Poweramp and uses JRiver for playback. It seems to be an excellent solution for a one box solution and Neal provides absolutely excelsior service.

The Romulus has my attention now and I'll start the due diligence motor up! I do love the AMR sound though and may stay with the DP777SE.

Bud, I also noticed there are a pair of rare Marten Coltrane Alto standmounts up for sale on the 'Gon at the moment which I rate as better overall than the Q1's going for a bargain price of $9k. The Alto's were $24k when then last sold in 2006 & use a carbon/kevlar monocoque cabinet, so basically the best material you can buy. They also go lower than the Mini 2's and are not critical with room placement. Some audiophile is going to be happy.

Technically serving music via NAS over ethernet is the best solution so long as your renderer is optimized for that. But for a server transport running to an external dac, the best solution is twin AES/EBU cables like the Aurender W20.

If you're looking at the Romulus, take a few mins to have a read of Grannyring's system. He has done some pretty awesome mods on his player.

About four years ago I upgraded to the NAD Masters series components and was quite surprised at how the M5 SACD player made my regular "Redbook" CDs sound better, later learning something about the differences in DACs.

Last year I got on to Audiogon and snagged a McIntosh MCD500 (just before the MCD550 was introduced) and have been really happy with the new SACD player. The "eight channel" ESS DAC chips they use in those units sound very good, very smooth, yet extract so much detail from the source. I suspect the MCD550 sounds even better!

These units are quite "pricey", but if you snag a good, used model, you should be as happy as I am with mine, at a more reasonable price.