The mcd 500 is an excellent digital playback system. I believe it has 4 on-board dacs, this allows the mcd 500 to be used as a stand alone dac as well and accepts usb input. I listened to this very system with a pc as the music server having the usb interface directly into the mcd500 dac, the sound was very good! Overall well balanced and quite natural.
Pop in a cd or sacd and it still sounds wonderful, I really couldn't tell what the fuss was about with all the high-res downloads etc. I understand that the high res stuff like 24/32 bit 192k sounds awfully good but then again a good recording on standard cd & sacd sounds great as well.
Perhaps stingray has a pretty expansive cd collection, therefore is naturally thinking of a dedicated cd player. In this case after listening to the mcd500 you maybe tempted...
Having said that, the New way to go would obviously be a music server, I think mac does one, can't remember the model.
mac also just released a new dedicated transport with a separate dac, maybe something to consider as well.
With regards to amplification, between tubes and ss such as Jeff Rowland designs and Arc or mac, this is a matter of taste and budgets. Stingray, you would have to actually audition various amps combinations before settling in for mc501 monoblocks. If you could stretch the budget, you may find a fine stereo amp that is capable of driving the SF Elipsa beautifully.
On the other hand the mc501's are very good. Cheers, RJ