have you ever had any of your changers modded or tweaked?
No as I mentioned - I am pretty lazy. My philosophy is that if it doesn't work well enough then I buy better designed gear (I don't lack funds). I use the same logic for cables and ic's - if my system ain't working well enough then I am not likely to band aid it with esoteric cables or to "mod" it to try and tweak the sound. The horror of it all is that I find the modern Sony changers are not all that bad - even raw out of the box and without an external DAC (although the most recent models sound a bit harsh (is it jitter?) compared to the early 2000's models which were good sounding out of the box - so YMMV substantially depending on the year the Sony changer was built). Speakers and room acoustics make ENORMOUS differences in my book. I'd probably be relatively happy with nearly any digital source...often sound pretty good for my tin ears (although CD recordings is another matter - many of them are crap - especially modern recordings of pop and rock). I would, however, be extremely unhappy with most speakers, which I find dreadfully deficient in most cases. Probably all because of my "tin ears".