Thank you one and all for your input regarding my problem with digital
string edginess which revealed itself after a speaker upgrade.  My system
consists of Vandersteen 2Cs, an excellent but 27 year old very bright
Pioneer amp, and an 11 year old $200 Denon CD player.

With my field narrowed by your suggestions, (and my wallet), I trotted
all over San Francisco with my most offensive CDs, (that would be Compact
Discs BTW, not Cross-Dressers), and after hours and hours of auditioning
players, I sit holding a Rega Planet 2000 CD player in my hands ready
to give it a try here at home.

(No offense to Jazz enthusiasts, but if I had to hear one more
demonstration by audiophile salesmen on the glories of properly reproduced
thumb-clicking...do they all get the same demo CD in the mail?)

Well, *what* an improvement.  Not just a refinement, but I would say an
30-40% overall improvement, including detail and depth, and most important,
*no* more edginess.  (A few unfortunate exceptions-including a Delos
disc of orchestral Griffes.) I know there is better out there still, but
I want to retain a certain blissful ignorance if you understand--I don't
want every listening experience to become a performance test.  That's
it I'm done.  (Well, maybe some Vandersteen Sig's down the road.  And a
subwoofer.)

So, if you've got decent equipment but listen to orchestral music through
an older mass-produced inexpensive CD player, as I did, the Rega may be
a *safe* upgrade, lending some dramatic improvement to your massed-string
sound--without highlighting weaknesses in the rest of your system.

John Smyth