Hi Frankpiet.
No experience with any EMM Labs gear or the Metronome gear. I can't see myself buying a super expensive CD2 based transport. I did consider the P01 transport but the mechanism is the same as the UX1 I have. I also considered the XDS1 but went with a Spectral 4000S Pro CD player instead. I was reluctant to spend so much on a unit with a switching power supply. Also, for redbook CD, from an analytic standpoint I was also hesitant to upsample everything to DSD, which the XDS1 does (using probably an ASRC).
As for the 2020, it remains excellent and with the Trinnov ST2 Pro room correction, offers the best sonics yet. I am a big believer in a DAC that offers the following: proprietary digital filter, multibit conversion, proprietary I-V converter and discrete analog output stages. The units that I've owned that do this all have really impressed me (I realize this only ex post). The list that comes to mind are: Wadia 900 series, Boulder, Spectral CDP, Naim DCA, possibly dCS and Lavry. Other units may use op-amps somewhere or an off the shelf DF. MSB would be the other one - although they don't have an I-V and drive the output directly, if I recall their design overview correctly.
