Sony 9000es or Musical Fidelity A3 CDP.

I have heard both and the only reson to buy the Sony is if you want DVD.If you intend to play CD Redbook run run as fast as you can from the Sony.
Its typical Sony sound BAD.
The A#CD is better and the REGA Planet 2000 Is better than both.
Sony as a serious Red book CD player.I have heard it all.

I partially agree with Nat on this one. But what I would do is buy the Sony and then buy an EVS or Bel Canto DAC. Why? Because the Sony sound is lacking, but the transport portion is clearly superior to the other choices, if not superior to players costing a 1000 bucks more. Then after I lived with it for a while I'd hit for the mods by Dan Wright. I did an extensive A/B with the 9000 and the 777 multichannel SACD player, and believe the foreground to be equal. But the background, that was another story and the 777 blew away the 9000 (of course I'm only talking a SCAD comparison, not redbook). Good luck, go for the Sony!

Tbadder, when you talk about foreground and background, are you talking about soundstage depth?

A digital signal out is a digital signal out why waste your money.If you had the extra 1K to throw buy a Rega Jupiter or a 2K player.You can move into the next level.The Planets dac is better than the Belcanto to start.
The Belcanto is to be used with older players.Both the A3Cd and Rega alone will out play what comes out of the Bel Canto.

I agree that the sony is the winner if you don't intendid on using it for analog out on use of redbook cd's. If you plan on using it as a tranport for redbook/dvd(digital output) and analog SACD output it will do super. I found the DAC-in the sony- to be pretty lifeless and dull sounding on redbook recordings, very uninvolving and compressed. But with a good DAC it will bring new life to an other wise great player, there is probably some truth to Natalie's comment, digital has improved exponentially since its introduction, cheaper players now will outperform premium players of yesterday. I found that my old Rega planet sounded better then the sony 9000es, though I don't use the DAC in the sony so I don't really notice the problem. Do any of you out there with modwright mods notice improvements with the digital output of there unit? or is it more on the analog level that the improvements really shine?
~Tim