I bought one of the then top of the line units for CD players and preamps -- don't recall which model now, but it was $99. I tried it on the Onix CD player I had at the time and although at first it sounded pretty good, it didn't take me long to pull it out and throw it in a box somewhere.
I recently came across that box a couple of weeks ago and found the thing and was just going to advertise it for sale here, but then decided to plug it into te red wine modified Toshiba 3980 player that I was using into my Carina and Horns.
Well, I'll be damned, it made a significant and wonderful upgrade. I've had it in the setup for almost a couple weeks now and it's still wonderful -- far less harsh and fatiguing, overall much more smooth, better bass, lots more tone to acoustic instruments and voices, etc.
Then I swapped in the RWA 30.2 for the Carina, and still wonderful.
I had planned on just selling this toshiba player once my good phillips top-loading transport arrives, but it will probably end up in a very small basic system in the bedroom -- already have the speakers (ones I built), and a Tweak City Audio $100 Gizmo amp, and presto -- a tiny, decent system that can easily sit on a bookshelf.
The dakiom made a huge, positive difference in this player, but as I said earlier, really ruined the sound of the Onix player I had (which was the more expensive Onix model at about $1000).
-- Jim