Kirk,
How can you say such a qualified statement such as "radio shack modified by Paul Weitsel will beat ANYTHING Stan Warren has to offer"? How are you so sure of this?
I and others have compared Stan's best digital work to top of the line Theta, Krell, Sonic Frontiers, Audio Research and Wadia. Guess what? Stan's digital was the best sounding! What you are saying in this thread then is that Paul's modified Radio Shack player will beat any Theta, Krell, SF, AR or Wadia. This is VERY hard to believe! Perhaps you are not really aware of what Stan Warren is capable of building. Please Let us all know how you are qualifying your "ANYTHING" statement.
Something else that everybody reading this thread should be aware of: The Aiwa player has been used as a transport by some extremely competent high end audio speaker companies, really! (Most don't want anyone to know they are using it though, for fear of backlash from the audio community)... Think about it; "We design our ultra expensive speakers using a $129 5 disc digital transport, from a mid-fi company called Aiwa". This would bury a speaker company's high end reputation with any name dropping audiophile! They would be saying something like; "What!, You don't use something like an Wadia, Theta or Levinson to design your speakers, but an Aiwa instead? Your reference system is obviously flawed, and now I'm wondering about your speaker building abilities."
I will say that I was very impressed to see a system at the CES 2001 show that had an Aiwa 5-disc transport with an un-named over the top D/A converter and Merlin speakers. I think this room was in the top five best sounding rooms at the show, if I'm not mistaken.
