The fit and finish are very good. I plan to leave it on repeat for a week or so before I form any conclusions about how it sounds, but I believe I already know the answer: With the development of better DAC chips combined with the economies of Chinese production today's $500 CD player sounds better than the $500 players that were offered five or more years ago. I would be surprised if it didn't better my Marantz CD-67SE. On top of that, AV123 is offering this $500 player for $299.I will be especially interested in hearing how it compares to the current crop of non-oversampling DAC's such as the Scott Nixon tube DAC, the dAck! DAC, and Audio Mirror DAC. These inexpensive DAC's are the topic of the Houston Audio Society's August meeting, where we will compare all three to the DSD and PCM analog outputs of a Sony SCD-XA9000ES SACD player.
I believe I will bring the Onix along, and if the other members will tolerate a lowly $299 player, compare it to the external DAC's, with some experienced listeners evaluating the differences. I'll post the results here.
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