First of all, I want to say that I read a lot of customer reviews (international sites) about many CD players for their sound and mainly for the issue of reliability. I was always impressed that What Hi-Fi kept naming Marantz as the best CD player of the year in recent years. Now that I bought it, I understand why. First of all, the build quality is flawless. The photos on the internet do not do it justice! The disc tray is completely silent when it opens and closes. It weighs 6.5 kg, the heaviest in its category. Even the screws on the back are of a "special" type and remind you of top-notch equipment from the '80s and '90s. Inside, it is full of "components," and you don't see any bare metal. You look at photos of other, more expensive CD players, around a thousand euros, and they are empty inside. The sound is now perfectly balanced, beautiful, and refined! Nothing stands out to annoy you. Low, mid, high frequencies, and vocals all satisfy you. Overall, there is a harmony in the whole. Since I can't stand harsh upper mids-highs, I was very afraid it would turn out bright-sounding or clinical-sounding like many new CD players. In the end, everything is great. What impresses is its rhythm and the precision of the machine's sound. It has the ES9010K2M DAC chip inside. Before May 2021, it had the AKM 4490 DAC. Kudos to Marantz!!