Original dCS Delius vs the new favourites?

Murrayp, the world of reference level, along with digital gear in general, DACS has come along way in the last ten years.

I used to use a Purcell in my system and it made a great inprovement with no down side at all. Some people still disagree regarding different sampling rates, but many great DACS use some type of up-sampling approach with great results.

You did not mention if SACD is important to you or are you mainly interested in redbook? If redbook is your major pursuit, I would recommend you take a look at a thread, Reference DACS: An overall perspective, that I started that contains a great amount of information concerning the different sonics of the best CDP's and DAC's that are the most current digital front ends on the market today.

You left off your list such great digital pieces such as Accustic Arts, the new reference from Audio Research, Ensemble, Audiomat and many others, that have much to offer at the reference level.

Thanks Teajay,

It always surprises me how much more can be teased out of systems when you think they are already going pretty well. SACD is great on a few of my discs (red book doesn't come close on some) but the selection is the limiting factor of course. I do read of redbook cd players achieving "SACD sound quality" levels but I wonder how (and whether) that might really be possible (and how much might be a little bit optimistic / self supporting of the argument against SACD). I guess it's all relative though but I can see I'll have to make an effort to hear some of the newer machines.

Thanks again for your time, thoughts and direction,

Murray