cd player recommendation

Juszat - what's your budget? Brands that were on my short list were Marantz,
TEAC & Ayre (the latter used!). A few outfits will do 30 day money back.
Stephen Monte at Quest for Sound worked out a home audition on a TEAC for
me.

I suggest you audition several players in your price range.

there are dealers who will sell you a player and give you 30 days to listen to it and allow you to return it if you are not satisfied.

audio advisors, music direct and possibly the cable co. are three examples. I suspect there may be some other dealer, hopefully local which have such a program.

the problem with opinions, is that there are many of them and audiophiles often have their favorites. your preference may differ.

kinematic mechanizms need to be cleaned and so is the CD door that probably doesn't reach the electrode whent it closes or electrode needs to be cleaned off corrosion as well.
i've realized that there not too many techies left alive in this country that actually can do this type of work and there are also no schools or colleges for that either, but watching and foraging for some youtube videos may give you an idea what needs to be done before you start trashing your player that is still probably a good performer. after all what'ya going to loose?
there are also choices to send it over to canada to partsconnexion where chris(former sf boss) will service it and possibly offer you some upgrade options to earn extra cash, but this will cost you round trip shipping + labor + parts with all due respect to him. he may also be very helpful guiding you to the safe dissassembly of the mechanizm to perform this operation as well because he still never minds to support his former product.
selling your unit with "no cd" or cd door issues will bring up lots of lowballs and may be frustrations, but don't be because purchasing malfunctioning cd-player to earn money after servicing and fixing is the worst risk due to the fragil kinematics of the tray and transport mechanizm.

as to cd-player recommendation, i've sold mine and replaced it with hdd-ssd based music server where ssd is primary media and hdd is archive media working under the same processor. most of the music is ripped and played from the ssd that would hardly develop any wear. my music server is connected to mytek 192 dac-preamp.

Juszat-- There is a 24 bit BAT VKD 5SE with superpak listed for $2,065. The superpak isn't mentioned in the description but if you look at the photos you can see those big silver cans thru the cover. I contacted the seller and requested the serial number. The machine was built in 2000 and the superpak upgrade was in 06. That machine uses 4-24 bit burr brown dac chips and with updates is selling for about half of the used price. It retailed for $8500.00. Balanced Audio does not manufacture CD player anymore but will continue to service the player. I have 3 turntables, 2 cd players, a computer based dac driven media center and just way to much equipment for my wife to approve. The chassis has a few scratches but the machine itself will compete with the best. I have no affiliation with the seller just a strong temptation to pick it up.

Wow - 10 years on a CD player is something. I know that player had a following, so if you really like it, it may be worth sending it to Chris in Canada. That aside, there is so much written on the various CD players that I really don't have much that hasn't been said many times. My personal preferences are the Doge6, about $2K from Pacific Valve, and the EAR Acute, about 6K. The older models sell for good prices on A'gon if you can find them. Both players are highly resolving, but not harsh. Enjoy.