dcs puccini, chord red ref, meitner cdsa or nagra

@ Maxx2man - Chord Red Reference got a mixed review from HiFi News (UK). You may want to check it out.

@ Kops - did you change from CDSA to Puccini ? How do they compare. I know that you were a huge fan of EMM.

@Elberoth2- Adam, yes very recently I changed, I've let dCS Puccini to burn-in and this weekend I had a shootout with the new Emmlabs owner and 2 more audiophiles, well the Puccini having much wider soundstage, more transparency (it's like a shower in music!) more live and vivid but as smooth and above all it was the first time I understood that Emm cdsa se had some kind of glare and blurr and mixed some instruments, although I still think cdsa se it's still a fantastic player, Puccini is another league and very musical too.
The most impressive thing is what it does to plain vanilla redbook cds with dsd upsampling!!!
All the cabling was the same and both players used 2 Stealth Dream digital power cords.
And the whole feeling of construction and extra options is amazing. I have not connected yet directly to my amplifier so I still have things to check.

For me both players (Puccini and cdsa se) are the most exciting balance of smooth musical sound but also precise and revealing (even warm sounding in a good way). Some experience with non-oversampling dacs was dramatic, yep these dacs masking the music but hides things in attempt to be musical as I concluded the hard thing is to keep it musical but with all the information and right timbre as well and in that area new dCS and Emmlabs are among the best representatives.

Dazzdax,
I couldnt say whether a top of top of the line vinyl playback or the Scarlatti is better.

The Scarlatti is stunning and I doubt any analogue system has the dynamic range or noise floor of the DCS. The usual complaints people have towards digital playback I dont think exist with the Scarlatti. I guess only you can decide in the end though.

Why don't you try Metronome T2i sig or new transport converter combo T3A/C3A , Spectral SDR 4000 on red book is better then Scarlatti.

Metronome make some great sounding players. The T2i signatrure is good. The Spectral SDR4000 may be good, I havent heard it, but it is the ugliest player in the world closely followed by the Playback design.

No matter how good the Metronome is and the Spectral may be on red book, they cannot compete with a SOTA SACD player playing SACD. Although having said that an SACD is only as good as the recording...