Thanks very much for your comments, including the warning about its sound prior to burn in.
I don't have much flexibility in terms of speaker placement so I hope that's not going to be a sticking point. This is not an issue I've encountered in reviews of this unit or other transport threads here. Don't mean in any way to refute what you say-- only to say your observations in this regard are unexpected.
Not sure how you define hi-rez. My Hegel integrated is pretty resolving but no-one would likely describe my my Aqua DAC as "analytical".