This is a very good cd-player. It has a nice fluid sound. There is depth, staging, positioning. All around 75-80 % of the maximum available. It is a pretty bright sounding cd-player, but if it is used in an all silver system than it can kick ass, definetly ! I play with a completely Sphinx setup. Which consist out of PJ 3 DAC, PJ 4 PRE, PJ 12 MAIN. This system shows itself on Tandberg Studio Monitors from around 25 year old. When you change the CD-player with an Sony CDP-XA50ES in this system than the power is gone ! Even a Wadia 12 does not work better. So within a silver based system it works absolutely perfect.

Sphinx PJ 9 alone 5 stars and with Sphinx PJ 3 DAC 5 stars !!

Laurens