[QUOTE=RGA
Abd yes I'm an AN fanboy - but the cd player has a different design topology than almost all other cd players on the market without a digital filter and a direct play no times oversampling system - it should be worse - it no doubt measures worse - but it sounds one helluva lot better than any other cd playing digital system - simply because it captures the high frequency resoplution better and doesn't sound sheeny etchy or bright - but still extended - no warm and fuzzy but transparent without the grain I get from all the cd players in my house.[/QUOTE]

Have to agree the AN CDP's sound different, and actually better, than the oversampled, digital filter messes that are out there. But I tend to be careful about using words such as "transparent" because transparency (to me) means true to the source - the source in this case being the source disc. I have no doubt the AN players distort the source disc, the same as LP's are not as faithful to the master tape as are CD's. However, I'm a poor excuse for an audiophile in that I don't worry too much about transparency. Rather, I concern myself with the system's faithfulness to the live event, or at least my idea of what the live event sounds like. The fact that AN players and LP's sound more like live violins, saxes, guitars, etc makes them more "correct".

Regardless of this, I still cannot recommend spending a disproportionate amount of money on the front end. On the other hand, once your system is in place and you've taken care of the room acoustics, the speakers and the amplification, if you can get a 2% improvement (as an example) for 6000% more money and it's worth it to you, by all means you should go with it. No one is saying that by spending 6000% more (again, just an example) that one is getting anything approaching that much improvement. But if you've got the scratch, that 2% might be worth it.