Major upgrade from Rega Apollo: Which one?

To Courant Thank you for the tip about the Meridian transport. Would you have possibly gotten as good if not better results with the Hegel HD-11?? Nevertheless, I assume you were referring to the Musical Fidelity VDAC II which is relatively inexpensive. Though MF encourages buying a better power supply from them.. The Panagea PS is just as good for half the price of the MF power supply. Will check it out.

BTW, I almost bought a Ayre CX-7e. The CX-7emp2 is the latest version and supposedly the best. Thanks

The Rega Apollo Provided complete musical satisfaction.
Assuming the Saturn is at least as good (at 2.5 times price retail), what is an "epic" improvement in complete musical satisfaction?
Mr. Courant, please explain.
Perhaps you had a defective Saturn.

I owned an Apollo and was looking for the same thing you are. I bought a Sim Audio 260D. It meets all of my expectations and is clearly better than the CD player I had before the Apollo, a Meridian 508.24 (this was a $4000 machine in itsday). The Sim also is better than the Apollo.

Audio Space CDP8A. Had the Apollo in my system and the Audio Space is more musical. Allows a SS or Tubed output.

Mated with W4S and Maggie 3.6's.

"Mr. Courant, please explain.Perhaps you had a defective Saturn."

Formally, it's Doctor Courant. :-) (I'm an experimental psychologist by trade)

My impression was that the G98DH had better Bass, Detail/Clarity, and Soundstage compared to the Saturn. I was running both sources through Linn Exotik/Akurate 2200 (2010) with Harbeth Compact 7es-3s. The Meridian made the Harbeths disappear. The Saturn had a warmer sound, but lacked the degree of sonic detail & soundstage compared to the G98DH. The Saturn was good, but the Meridian was AWESOME.

Again, this is a personal preference. There just seemed to be better synergy pairing the Meridian source with my Linn pre/amp setup. Again, YMMV.