Dgarretson, great post!
I see this tread has been running for a while so I might as well jump in.
I'm one of those not so curious individuals who bought the 5400 and had it shipped direct to Modwright. I've heard several Sony ES players over the years and to my ears, for anything other than SACD, they just sounded OK. The 5400 may be a different animal but I doubt it.
I just decided I wasn't going to waste the time or additional shipping charges on a stock unit that I only purchased in the first place to have modded by Dan.
If you own a stock unit or some other brand that you think sounds wonderful, that's great but if you haven't heard the Modwright/Sony, don't assume it's just another decent sounding player to be compared with other $3-$4k players.
A good friend of mine who also happens to be a dealer(not Modwright), purchased a 5400 and had it sent to Modwright same time I did. He too is very impressed with the sound but like many audiophools, he's sometimes tempted by what he reads in the audio rags. In this case, he's been itching to hear the $15k Playback Design unit that's gotten a number of gushing reviews.
Well, last week he took delivery of a used Playback Design he found on the 'gon for a measly $9700. Such a deal! I went to his house Friday night for a listen, wondering as I drove there, what if the Playback Design sounds a lot better? Would I be willing to ante up for the improved sound? Probably not; I really can't find any nits to pick with the Modwright.
I get there and his system's all warmed up, both players feeding his VAC Sig. Mk2 preamp via balanced Siltech cables and the Modwright's making beautiful music. We listened to 5 or 6 tunes then switched to the Playback Design. Oops, the whole soundstage shrank. The sound went from 3-dimensional organic images to something that could only be described as 2-dimensional, lean and analytical. The music lost it's magic and all I could think was, the $15k player sounds like good digital but not at all believable.
I'm thinking, something's gotta be wrong here. I ask my buddy, how long's your system been on? A couple hours. How many hours on the player, is it broken in yet. He says he's the third owner but the guy he bought it from says it still needs breaking in. Hmmm.
So, after a few more hours of listening and going back to the Modwright, we both agreed, either the Playback Design needs a LOT MORE break-in or the audio rags have lied to us again!
I've been living with my Modwright/Sony for a couple months now and I'm still shocked at how good it sounds. I'm also shocked at how average the Playback Design sounded in comparison. I read a couple of the reviews and they do say it needs 4-500 hours to sound it's best but with my friend being the third owner, you'd think it would sound better than what we heard. Another friend of ours stopped by for a listen a couple days ago and while he really likes the Modwright, he was less than impressed by the Playback Design unit.
Now, I'm not saying the Modwright is the best player out there but in my experience, you're gonna have to spend a lot more than the $3300 or so for the Sony and the mod, to get anything near the sound quality. I'm so impressed, I'm looking into a spare laser, just in case! Dan tells me, it's about the only thing that's likely to ever go bad.
