I bought my Carver MK6 CD Player at a Carver warehouse sale for $300.00, over half off of the suggested retail. It replaces a Sony CD Player that came with a cheap Sony rack system that long ago outlived its' usefulness.I am extremely impressed with this CD Player. I have it hooked to a Carver CT27-V Preamp to a Carver AV505 5 channel sorround sound Amp and on to Carver
AL III Speakers. I am using Kimber PBJ interconnects and low end Monster Cable Speaker Cable (I am upgrading to Kimber Speaker Cable this month.)
I have played this CD Player side by side to my old Sony listed above and lets just say, not a fair contest! The Sony is flat and mushy, the Carver is Full and vibrant. The Sony seems to lack the ability to faithfully reproduce the upper and lower ends of the musical spectrum, the Carver delivers highs and lows I've never heard through my sytem before.
I have also compared it to a friends Portable Optimus CD Player, sorry, can't remember the model (You know, the one with the digital output that got the rave reviews in stereophile magazine some years ago) We ran this through his $179.00 DAC in a BOX. Sounded terrific. The high end was full and vibrant while the low end was clearly present. Upon switching to my MK6, I can only say that the musicality of the Carver and the previously described set up was different, but I wouldn't say that either was superior to the other. Given a choice, I would stick with the Carver MK6 CD Player. (I guess that is a biased opinion influenced by the fact that us guys don't ever want to admit that we are wrong and made a mistake when it comes to purchasing anything in the mid to high end audio world.)