At the risk of running afowl of the Ray and Seabear, I'm going to take a crack at this. I have a Pioneer 563A and a Denon DVD 2900. While the Denon is somewhat better than the Pioneer, it's not earth shatteringly better. I could have been perfectly happy with the Pioneer, but I received a DVD-A disc for Xmas which it wouldn't play, so I ordered the Denon after complaining for a week. I really don't think there is a big difference in audio quality from one manufacturer over another. I'm sure there are other opinions which will prove me wrong, but if it were me, I wouldn't break the bank on one of these players.
