My late thoughts: The McCormack has served me well for SACD and I think it still is a winner today. Funny thing, I have an old Sony ES, not a top of line one, but just a bit over the Best Buy quality; nevertheless, this output optical to my ARC DAC 3, the little player, as transport blows away the McCormack when ran direct to my ACR pre-amp! Now the McCormack ran with a good coax does hedge out the old Sony, but not by much.
Again the quality is subjective, while the ARC DAC 3 is very dynamic, the McCormack with two channel SACD has a more laid back sound and many might prefer it for soft jazz.
I have two Denon AV, the 3801 and 4802, which is one of the best Denon made in a receiver, amplifier wise, other than their top 5800 models