With the honesty of the Krell and playing the ERC against the romanticized sounding CJ my first impressions are holding pretty well for the ERC.

ERC strengths; low noise, large sound stage with plenty of air between instruments, will let you hear the material on the disc, very quick.

What I consider weaknesses; bass could be stronger, for instance, on drum rolls you hear the tom toms but it's like you just hear the head not the full body of the drum and it just lacks that bottom end fill, this could be a trade off to increased audibility of certain detail. Similar to what Arcam and Cambridge did on more entry players. Although the ERC is quick it lacks a sense of rhythm. I also personally find a lack of tonal character, you'd have to hear it I guess to understand what I mean but as I posted in my first post it lacks the tonal cues that tell you a B3 is a B3, for example. You'll hear the organ but it will sound generic or sterile.

The CJ DAC I have is solid state and probably from era 98 or so, this and the ERC were quite contrast of each other, I tried to do comparisons and it was almost like listening to two different versions of a song.

I sent an email to ask further on the XLR outputs and whether they feel the ERC has a break in period. I personally have not noticed dramatic improvements in electronics over time from out of the box.