I've owned the Denon-5000, the wadia 830, and the Sony XA7ES. The sony and wadia were very close, trailed by the Denon on sound quality. I had originally purchased the Denon as a cd and dvd player. I found the cd only units sounded better, and ended up selling the DVD because I didn't use it. I would say the sound quality was very good, but not as good. I found it hard to pay $20 for a DVD movie when I could record one off of my DirecTV satellite dish onto S-VHS and get close to the same quality. Then again, I don't even bother to hook my television up to my stereo.