Sony 9000ES: DanWright or StanWarren Mod

As an Electrical Engineer myself, I can attest to Stan Warren's abilities. He is the only, and I mean only modifier, that is offering a custom designed ,proprietary output stage, that is world class by any standard, in the audio world today.

There are many things you can do to modify these players, different caps, jacks, wires, power supplies. But the single largest improvement in sound quality comes from stripping out the stock output devices, and replacing them with much better performing gain stages.

To my knowledge, all other modifiers are just swapping the output devices with better IC's, or other types of "drop in" replacement gain stages. This is not nearly as heroic, as actually giving you an entirely new esoteric circuit, that has world class slew rates, settling times and symetrical electrical behavior.

If Stan Warren charged nore for his services, I feel that many more audiophiles would take him more seriously. He is that good!

Clarification: I should have stated: " Stan Warren's output stage offers unparralled sonic and electrical performance, as compared to ANY "drop in" replacement, that is available to the other modifiers. This makes his gain stage very esoteric indeed."

As a former Sales Enginner, who has represented a high performance IC's manufacturer, with 1200 different types of IC's, this is my qualified opinion.

Stan came up with his circuit design based on sonic comparisons of various circuit implementations, and compared them to these "drop in" replacement devices.

Stan has not always implemented his proprietary circuitry.
In his modifing past, he also used and implemented the best of the best "drop in" gain stages. This qualifies him to understand all of the variations, and their inherent sonic performance charactaristics, along with their limitations.

I have personaly told Stan to charge MORE for his services. I feel that many people overlook him, because they perceive him as a budget guy's modifier. In reality, he is nothing less than world class.