Hi Jasonod,
Glad that you have your burner sorted out. I notice you ask for opinion about DFX.
MC9 already has music enhancement features.
When I started with MP3 ripping, the encoding was not of very high quality, and DFX was very good at filling the MP3 sound gap. The enhancement makes MP3 sound much more natural.
Today, the encoder provided by MC is very good, and we can select High quality encoding, and use Var Bit rate. The combination allow MC to rip very high quality MP3 files.
I believe there are also other very good encoders supported by MC.
Hence, my view is that the encoding quality has improved, and the absense of HiFi in MP3 is no longer an issue. Hence, I also do not use DFX any longer.
If music quality is important, then patience in choosing a high quality encoding (takes a longer time to encode) and also using much better bit rates, like Var Bit rate or 320K bit rate, the music quality will improve much better.
Apart from S/W encoding, the sound card is also important, and many new sound cards are very impressive. Personally, I use the Creative Extigy.
If your interest is to have music enhancement, I notice that MC already support them under DSP Studio. But when I was using DFX, their features are also interesting. But these are just sound enhancements which can be fun to use. If you like them, certainly DFX will be a credible choice.