I just found the answer to my Marantz question. This should come as no surprise to anyone but the UD9004 manual is now on-line on the Marantz site and it is practically identical to the Denon manual
SACD is handled identically to the Denon A1, via HDMI it is down rezed to 44.1/16.
So $1500 buys you copper construction, Marantz HDAM-SA2&HDAM, BD-Live out of the box, an aluminum top for your remote and a different enclosure.
The only thing it doesn't have that the A1 has as far as I can tell is the obvious Denon link.
If the Lex can indeed stream native DSD via HDMI then Denon and Marantz best put in place a strategy to compete as there would be 2 cheaper players on the market offering a feature neither of the 2 most expensive players on the market can do. Maybe there is a more expensive player, didn't Goldmund put out a player for like $17,000?