the best CD player between 6'000 - 10'000 $ ?

Yes, Tvad, my dealer is worth his weight in gold. I bought a MF kW SACD player, which never played SACD's properly (bad trasnport). After 2 years, I just couldn't take it anymore (redbook was awesome so I didn't want to part with it) and had to bring it back (went for service and came back the same--poor transports). My dealer took it back on a trade in and I bought a new CD player. The kW was $7k new and the new player I bought was $7,400. My dealer gave me the new player (and took the MF) for $3,500! It gets better... The new player performed better with balanced cables, so he called Tara Labs (I exclusively use Tara) and he talked them into giving me a special promotional and I got $2,700 IC's for a little over a grand. Now, that's a dealer.

Listen to the new Gamut CD3. It was the best I could find in this price range.

Mike Cary 306 pro is so much better then CD3, CD3 has metal sounding strings. I heard CD3 with AR preamp, Gamut monoblocks on Kharma CRM 3.2. First with expensive all silver cabling, then with all K-S Emotion cabling. With silver it was uninvolving, without life and pretty bad overall. Emotions gave life to the system, dynamics, base, midrange, highs everything was so much better. Then we switched CD3 to Metronome CD5i sig and system was extraordinary, metal strings were gone, soundstage was wider, deeper and higher...

11-10-08: Teddy_bear
Mike Cary 306 pro is so much better then CD3, CD3 has metal sounding strings. I heard CD3 with AR preamp, Gamut monoblocks on Kharma CRM 3.2.

Yes, the latest Cary 306 gets my vote too. I chose this over the Marantz SA7, Esoteric X-03, EMM CDSA, Ayre C-5XE.

I thought the AMR CD77 was so "woollen" that i expected it to go "bah!".

The DCS Puccini was also pretty impressive - though pricey.

In dCS Puccini category I would choose Metronome T2i sig or Spectral 4000. MBL Noble line separates are distant third