Okay......best single box reference CD player

I agree with Larryi, as quite a few high end units use older out of production DAC chips. For instance, Esoteric, Naim, Muse, Zanden, Lector, & Empirical Audio all use the older Burr Brown 1704 in at least one of their current production units, and Charles Hansen of Ayre had mentioned how much he likes it as well, but cannot obtain them anymore. In the DACS that I have listened to, I also prefer this older chip which is why I researched this in the first place. That says nothing of course on how well the unit that uses the chip is designed, which may or may not be better with more recently designed gear.

i suppose it is hard to isolate performance to just the DAC; but i do think that my perception of the performance advances of the Playback Designs is likely due a great deal to it's unique DAC design.

the DAC in the Playback Designs MPS-5 has an open architecture; it can be 1 bit-5.6mhz or 32 bit-196mhz, 72 bit-496 mhz or anything they want it to be. thru the USB port the software can be updated to whatever they want. algorithms can be updated.

this approach; properly implimented.....would likely trump any older set of 'off-the-shelf' dac chips. and would also be likely to stay at the top level of performance longer since it can be upgraded thru software.

the challenge, of course, is 'properly implimented'.

Mike I agree with you about the other DACs but EMM LABS still has the best SOTA DAC which can also be updated through the USB port. As everyone knows, differences between great cd players are very subtle and it takes great experience with hi-end, musical organs, and music productions to determine what is more "correct". And I think the EMM LABS is the best out there.

There is not the best single box CD player, as a component of a systems it depends of the rest of the chain.Said this, I think that EMM LABS CDSA, Reymio, Puccini, Naim 555 , Memory player are among the best, I have not heard PD MPS5.
But perhaps the question is: I need to pay 2 or 3 times more for to get a little better sound? When we make this question, we are talking about relation price/quality, that is a very different thing that maximum quality at any cost, and logically the answers will be differents.
Jean Hiraga, the french engineer who was the first to talk about sound in relation components, and designed great tubes amps that were on Stereophile class A, one time said: if you have a great system, that give you the 95% of the posible quality achievable, to upgrade it to achieve the 96%, you surely need to expend twice the price, but if you have a system with quality 60%, then to achieve 65% you only need to expend a little more, the conclusion is: when we are talking about great systems or components any small increase in quality must be paid with a lot of money.
I have heard dCS Scarlatti system, I don´t want to say that is the best, but surely, because I heard it , take a seat, with one integrated amplifier, I don´t remember the brand but perhaps Arcam? and speakers that I don´t remember,and the sound were incredible, and after also with systems with BAT, Spectral, Soulution, FM acoustics, said this I want to say that it surely sounds better than the EMM labs combo, but I don´t want to expend the money to achieve this small amount of better quality, but if money wasn´t the question, I will buy it to achieve what I think it´s the best, and for one single box, surely I will buy Memory player, it has the futur inside.

Well said Emigene.

Dave