Wadia 581SE, DCS Puccini or something else???

I don't think the Wadia 9 series has been discussed often on Audiogon. Has anyone ever had the opportunity to compare the 9 series to the Wadia 581SE?

Thanks

I did not like the sound of the 581SE. Wadia I thought would be a great player before I heard it at a dealer. Audio Research CD7 sounded much better. Wadia reminds me of Rotel.

Have not compared Wadia 581SE do dCS but can say what Wadia’s sound signature is in comparison to Audio Aero Capitole SE and ML 390S.
Wadia and ML are closer to each other and starkly different players from AA.
To my surprise Wadia and ML sounded much smoother in HF than AA, quite the opposite of the preconceptions I had, and were significantly more extended on both ends.
The differences between Wadia and ML are not enormous, Wadia betters ML in terms of soundstage and imaging (ML is two dimensional in comparison to Wadia), and has more extension and control on bottom end, tonally they are close and the differences would be more along the lines of a preference and system synergy.
I personally would not go for AA, not even at significantly lower price tag.

It was easy to compare Wadia and dCS in Munich Show 08 on April. Most liked dCS.

Regarding remote controls, it's not the case to be beautiful but to work.

I owned the two box emm labs transport and dac and it is marvelous. Why buy the one box system when you can get the two box system used for the price of the inferior one box system used.

Or you can save even more money and get great analog sounding cd player from the reference marantz cd player (available used on audiogon for 4k-5k). Because of budget issues, I purchased the dartzeel preamp and acquired the marantz sa7s1 reference cd player. The addition of the dartzeel preamp to mate with my dartzeel amplifier even when connected to a much less expensive cd player easily outclassed the emm labs preamp/dac and separate transport paired up with my dartzeel amp. The marantz transport is quieter than the emmlabs transport and has a nicer remote too. If I could have kept the emm labs, I might have since it is might be a little more revealing than the marantz but its damn close.