DEDICATED CD PLAYER $1K AND UNDER, THOUGHTS?

tweak1

Blu-Ray and DVD aren't great as transport it's better to use dedicated CD transport without build in DAC to an extrnal dedicated DAC,moreover coax digital cables are better than Toslink ones.

You can probably find a used Audio Refinement CDP for less than 500usd. Easily worth the money.

+1 for Rega CD players.  I still have the original Planet spinning discs in my living room.

Also add Resolution Audio to your list.

Also I have the same Marantz player - which sounds super clear and detailed. It holds a warm place in my heart and opened the door to hi-FI for me.  Moving up should pull a lot more “soul” from your discs. I’m continually wowed by the players I upgraded to. Let us know what you get!

would agree with Kalali,,,,Have two of the denafrips DACs...have never had better digital sound in my system. will blow away the stock dac chip set in your CD player. don't waste your money on another CD player....for a similar sonic experience....even the entry level Denafrips Ares is a smoking buy, nothing comes close for under 2k.

The other option is to do what a few others suggested and exact copy the CDs to a drive using a server to play the tracks....bit error rates on Hard drives are much better than on optical drives.