to SACD or not

Try audtioning an Esoteric. You won't find a better built SACD player (or sounding IMO)with the best transport made.
Look for an X-05 or X03se in you budget new or find a P05/D05 used.

Regards,

Love my EMM CDSA-SE (~ $5,500 used)- reviews are spot on. More natural sounding than my friend's Esoteric P-03/D-03 combo... The only other machine I would consider at a similar price point would be the Marantz SA-7S1 (~ $3k used) with mods by Jena Labs (~ $2K) for total of $5k... Above that it takes BIG $$$ to beat these machines IMO... **Caveat- this is for SACD ONLY. On Redbook, my battery p/s modded 47 Labs Flatfish transport and Audio Note 3.1x Balanced Dac betters the EMM...

as much as i believe the sony 5400 is a good player, and the modwright upgrade is a good idea as well, i will never understand how anyone can confidently state that "it takes months" for something to break in. i've just never bought anything that took a great deal of time to sound differently than day one. maybe day 3 or day 7... even two weeks perhaps.

I have a Denon 5910ci and a Ayre C5xe-mp and there is no comparision between the two. I only use the denon for 5.1 SACD and DVD-A which is rare. Based on your budget you have a number of options, but one question, do have any discs? I have a few and sometimes I think I would have been beter invested in buying the LP's and staying with redbook. But I will add for redbook the Ayre does a great job as well.

get a turntable
vpi classic