I bought this about three years ago on the reputation of Sony's ES line being among the better lines out there. Unfortunately I seem to have missed Sony's best years with the ES series as this player is very finicky on what it plays for standard CDs. It started on just certain CDs (three to be exact) but now it gets very glitchy on every standard CD played in it. It has no problem playing hi-rez SACDs but standard redbook, forget it. The machine will start and stop at odd intervals. Sometimes it won't even load a CD. CDs with the slightest scratch throws it into fits. It also has problems playing some CD-Rs. Obviously this is a fault with the laser mechanism. At $399 it shouldn't be having this problem at all. Also the build quality doesn't seem the most robust. In fact it feels downright flimsy. My '77 Marantz feels stronger than this. Even my '87 Technics CD player is built like a tank and still runs like a champ and I paid a little over half what I paid for the Sony (granted that's in 1987 money but even now it still comes out to about the same in todays money). I do wonder if the country of origin has something to do with it (Malaysia for the Sony vs. Japan for the Technics). Unfortunately to get something even made in Japan, nowadays, one has to pay through the nose ($2200 for the Marantz SA-15 S2). So I will probably send this unit back for warranty work (5 year warranty on that puppy), but there is a good choice that I may get a better unit when I can afford it. Either the Marantz SA-8003 ($1000) or the Yamaha CD S1000 ($1300). The Yamaha may be the one where it has the least amount of bell-and-whistles and it looks like it is built like a tank (33 lbs vs. the Marantz's 17 lbs), but there again is the country of origin rears its head again. The Yamaha is built in Malaysia and the Marantz is built in China. At their price points I would expect them to be built in Japan, not a third world nation. So, we'll see what happens.