Raysonic 168

I believe the 168 has a volume control enabling you to run it directly into a
power amp without an intervening active preamp/linestage. This may not be a
good idea, sonically. Saturday I took my Raysonic 128 over to a friend's house
to play it through his passive linestage. Sounded totally unlike itself -- scrawny,
threadbare, glary -- and I quickly reinserted it into my CJ Premier 17LS2 when I
got home to see if it was damaged. Nope, sounded great. But it definitely
doesn't play well with passives, or at least this particular one that was custom-
built by my friend. His own CD player/DAC sounded just great through this
passive, BTW. Dave

the 168 has the Volume as stated above, might be good, might not work with all systems... It also has a philips transport vs. the Sony unit used in the 128.. it has orange lights opossed to blue... It has what seems to be a different model DAC chip, but also loses the HDCD capability it seems... As for the price I believe the 128 is 1699 unless they upped it, and the 168 is like 2399... Worth 700 more? Well a real serious A-B test would need to be done, but unless you need the volume control, and don't want HDCD, it seems the 128 might still be the best value and probably sounds just as good.

I think the current MSRP for the 128 is $1850. I can't see the additional money for the 168, given what you say, but it would be nice to see some review comparisons.