Ayre CX-7 vs. Meridian G08 ?

I've tried both in my system and ended up buying the G08. Tonally, the two players are more similar than different. They both sound very natural with a slight bias toward warmth, but the CX-7 is a little warmer than the G08. The main reason I bought the G08 was it has a deeper soundstage and higher resolution than the CX-7. You can hear some low-level things clearly with the G08 that are lost below the noise floor on the CX-7. The G08 is somewhat sensitive to ICs. I've found Kimber KS-1130 to work well in my system (Rowland/Soliloquy 6.5).

FWIW, I have had my G08 14 months now and have only had one disc that caused any mechanical noise. That was solved by levelling the player. That disc no longer causes any noise.

Also, in the manual it says the G08 runs its transport at standard CD speed most of the time. It only speeds up when it encounters errors, then it re-reads the tracks at a higher rate to try to correct the errors.