Yeah, I have that problem, too. I want it all, and it is possible to have it all -- only usually not on a budget. Since I'm always on a budget, that means I usually have to prioritize. I think you might need to, too.

I like Arcam's CD players a lot -- they have great timbre and lots o' guts. The Cambridge 640c is another contender that plays Red Book CD completely out of its weight class. Neither of them offer HDCD or SACD -- nor do they play more than one disc.

Now, I like HDCD players -- that HDCD digital filter is pretty sweet -- and I really like SACD, but 95% of my music is on Red Book CD, so I'd opt for a player that made those discs sound their best (which doesn't eliminate an HDCD player, since they play Red Book data really well -- I just can't think of any at the 640c's price point).

I'd probably feel SACD was more important if I weren't feeling pessimistic about the future of high-rez digital this week. I think the labels and manufacturers have managed to cripple both formats to the point where neither will be a significant commercial entity -- which means neither will prevail. Gee, I hope I'm wrong.

And I understand the appeal of a 400-disc carousel (or two), as well, but now that iTunes has the Apple Lossless Encoder, which allows me to store uncompressed files in about half the space, I tend to use my computer for long background playlists and my single-play machine for critical listening.

As you've probably guessed, my advice is to decide what is most important to you and then buy the player that most satisfies that aspect of your want list -- keeping in mind that when you fall in love, nothing is as logical as I have made it sound.

Thanks for the kind words. Holy cow, though -- I bet your system sounds really nice. Even when I was a tube snob, I always had a soft spot for Spectral gear. (In fact, it's hard to argue that solid state is in any way inferior to tubes when you're confronted with a Spectral system.)

I love the McCormack, and I thought it made a great partner for the Aerial 20Ts. However, it is a very different sound than the one you are used to, and I'm assuming that you run your system balanced, which means you don't have the right cable to connect your Model 15 to the DNA-500 -- and replacing an MIT interconnect is not an expenditure anyone would undertake lightly.

Please note that I don't consider the McCormack sound "inferior," only quite different in tonal balance to your Spectral gear. Steve McCormack has been producing extremely high-value audio gear that was capable of satisfying the pickiest of audiophiles for donkey years now -- and, while I haven't heard them in years, I think the '500 sounds superior to his too-good-to-be-true Mod Squad-modified Quad monoblocks, for which I would have amputated certain body parts in order to have owned.

Normally, I'd say, try it and see, but your seller won't allow an audition, which strikes me as unreasonable. My advice is to wait -- which is the hardest lesson to learn of them all. There is no shortage of previously owned high-end gear on the market, and the patient audiophile will be rewarded. Heck, you might even find a pair of '360s that a new convert to SETs just has to get shed of.

I've heard John Atkinson's Benchmark DAC1, and I thought it was pretty good. John told me that he thought his Levinson No.30.6 was better, but he would never use words like "smoked" or "vastly superior," when such a mild degree of better was more like it (my words, his meaning -- as I understood it).

I didn't get a chance to borrow John's Benchmark DAC1 and do a direct comparison because John uses it as part of his working rig as an engineer and it's in regular use in his system.

I have no idea which is "better," but I trust JA's and John Marks' ears a lot, so I'd have no qualms buying either one (assuming I gave my reviews equal weight, which is a stretch even for my ego).