Yeah, I thought at that price it has few rivals. Do you think VoodooDoctor that it is distinctly better than the likes of the Rega saturn though? I have not listened to the Saturn and some say it's a giant killer. Mind you, the same is said about the Antila in the context of even higher priced competition - Hifi world in their review said that it took something like the Esoteric X03se to realistically compete with it, which is saying something.
If I got the leema antila I'd never have to think about changing the cdp. My sole reservation, is I just don't know with dacs as good as they are, whether there is logic in going for a very high end cd player (even at just 1/2 it's RRP!), when I am not convinced that cd is the future of digital music playback. File based playback just offers so much more convenience through having all your songs accessible in one place, and being free to browse and manage an entire collection of songs through a proper UI like the ipod's or iTunes, rather than a dot matrix display which limits info to track number and time! Plus, even where cd has been purported to have the adv. and is the main reason given for support of the format over mp3, there is the fact that unless a memory is used (such as with the Ps Audio perfect wave transport) cdps have to perform error correction on the fly, which is not an issue with hdd based playback. Therefore provided a perfect copy of the disc is created I can't see how cds played back thru any cdp have the adv. That said, all my music is on cds - I don't download from itunes since this lacks both flexibility and sq when confined to just 128kbps.
So in this sense I am an advocate of cds. What's more, cds are often cheaper than the equivalent album bought from any of the main online music stores (provided they're not downloaded illegally for free), despite the fact you're actually buying a physical medium which has costs in distribution. However, although all my music is on cd, all my cds are ripped on itunes, and almost all of these are in lossless format. Despite the ripples that the CA dac magic and beresford dac have been making at the more budget market, I'm not sure that even a dac further up the food chain like the Chord electronics dac 64 (Which seems to divide opinion) being fed by a decent transport will outperform the leema antila, which has had a no-compromise philosophy applied to every aspect of its design. Although the dac does have the largest noticeable effect on sound, there are so many determinants to sq other which be it the squeezebox or wadia 170i and dac, means it's prob doesn't perform as well as the Antila.
I think I will hold out till the sb+ arrives since this seems to simiarly have a no-compromise design approach and address more issues that most mods or external dacs wouldn't address.
. Also I don't have a balanced amp to take advantage of that connection. aghhh
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