The Audio Aero Capitole is in my opinion the best recomendation, As Tireguy suggests, sell the placette and you'll be there.
I have owned many of the CD Transports or Players mentioned. After hearing the Capitol the choice is simple. It is also the most cost effective, because no additional DAC or Pre amp is needed. You also eliminate a lot of expensive cabling.
There is no 'best' anything. There are many well made and designed audiophile components, and even more cables.
If you are unsatisifed with the sound you are getting, focus on the souce material, verify speaker placement and room conditions, then upgrade the speakers.
The rest is pretty much aesthetic, phyco-acoustic game playing, and hair splitting.
Homedesign, you keep spouting off about "source material" and "psycho-acoustics" as if one can not hear differences in components or that one should only listen to good recordings.
How many people would be willing to sacrifice TONS upon TONS of "enjoyable" music that wasn't recorded all that great for a handful of "audiophile grade" recordings of music that was ( many times ) sterile and unmoving ? While i'll always prefer a good recording over a bad recording, i'll still settle for good music with a reasonable recording over "sucky" music with a great recording. There is a difference between "being pulled into the groove" and using a recording for reference purposes.
As to the differences in gear, i'm hoping to have a very well made professional grade multi-purpose ABX switchbox pretty shortly. It was made by Quad and used for testing purposes when designing gear. From what i've been told, there are two of these in existance and i've got a line on one of them. If i can snag it, we'll probably be doing some pretty interesting tests at the Chicago Audio Society meetings sometime soon. Sean >
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