Here is what I said in my last post:

"I'm talking only about the audio performance of a pre/pro: how it sounds."

lanion, with respect to your post, I will address it paragraph by paragraph:

"I am one to avoid snake oil and things being over-hyped myself, but different CD players sound different. Saying that digital signals have been 'mastered' is rather naive.... just like analog signals."

Are you saying that these different CD players sound different because of the pre/pro? Could you take two CD players that sound different, connect them to two different pre/pros, and through a blind listening test tell which pre/pro they are connected to? In a statistically significant way? I don't think I could.

Next paragraph.

"Dealing with analog signals may be mastered, but any turntable maker knows you have to put a ton of money into analog to make everything sensitive enough to pick up the information on the record."

I assume you meant cartridge manufacturer - and not turntable maker. If so let's say we have two pre/pros with but minute differences in any of the three sound properties that I listed (frequency response, noise, distortion), and assuming our cartridge manufacturer has spent his ton of money, are we likely to hear differences between those two pre/pros? Very minute - perhaps? Akin to wrapping a bunch of blankets around one's speakers (getting back to my original comment)?

Last paragraph.

"In digital you can easily have sloppy amplification, regardless of up-sampling. Converting digital to analog can be very noise if there is a cheap OPAMP anywhere in the circuit."

Again talking about pre/pros, can you name a single one that you have listened to, that was to your ears "very noisy" and which you knew was a result of a "cheap OPAMP." How was it "noisy?" Actual noise? Distortion? Inaccurate frequency response? Was it in a $1000 pre/pro (the bottom of the range that I used above) or in a $10,000 pre/pro?

It seems to me that with but the very rare exceptions, with all properly designed pre/pros, how it sounds, in terms of noise, distortion, and frequency response, should not be a concern. There can be screw-ups (take the hiss problems with the original Outlaw Model 950 as a good case in point) but I trust that any credible designer / manufacturer nowadays will be able to at least get the basic sound right. Yes I'm going to listen first to what I buy to make sure (and in the case of Outlaw at least get some form trial period / free return if I can't hear it before buying), but I'd be very surprised if what I heard from any pre/pro was anything but clean sound (or rather the lack of noticeable noise, distortion, or frequency irregularities) in comparison to any other pre/pro. There's many other things that could go wrong. Not to pick on such an obvious target, but the 950's DTS-ES bug is a good example.

And for the record, my Model 950 sounds great - which is what I would expect.