for $700 - 1box or 2 box dgtl playback?

PS: Another auditioning trick that works well (if it is OK with the shop) is to take your amp and speakers along (if they do not allow home demos). This will allow you to listen to your gear with many players in the same room which will give you a better idea of how they will sound at home. I cannot lift a great deal of weight right now, but carried the gear in my large suitcase on wheels the last time I did this. The shop got a kick out of it and my equipment was well protected. It would not work with floorstanders though.

GEMINI, trust your own ears first and I think you will come to this conclusion...ONE BOX! I have never heard a transport, dac, "digital lens", sonic binary filtering resequencing turbocharged algebraic jitter reducing blah, blah, blah,.....combination that didn't sound worse than a good one box unit. When you start adding all of this stuff you are INCREASING the circuit path. Also, the achilles' heel of most digital playback is a crummy output stage. Yes, most folks spend all this time on upgrading to higher sampling rates, seventeen gillion 24 bit converters, etc. and THEN run it through a noisy, poorly powered output stage. Do what Dekay above says and audition. Would suggest starting with Arcam, Creek and Rega players. Keep it simple.

Don't mean to butt in but I have a similar budget for a cd player. I have heard the Adcom GCD 700 5 disk player which lists at $700.00. It had an open warm sound. Any input on this unit as compared to those mentioned above is appreciated

I am using an Assemblage DAC-2 with a Rotel transport (RDD 980) and am very happy with the combination. I originally bought the DAC 2 to upgrade some really crappy Aiwa CD Jukeboxes, which it did in spades. I added the Rotel when I decided to get back into this hobby and the combo has been the constant in a pretty decent evolving system (BAT Amps and Magneplanar speakers). At any rate, you can probably get both of these pieces within your budget, and be pretty pleased. BTW, I agree that output stages are very important, and the DAC-2 has a pretty strong one, plus it has HDCD, which to my ears makes a tremendous difference in likewise encoded discs. If you are still in the market in a month or so, let me know. I have been hunting around for a BAT VKD5 player, and might have my gear up for sale by then. Good luck!

Kweisner: How pronounced was the difference (when used as a transport) between the "crappy" and the Rotel player?