Sony 9000es or Musical Fidelity A3 CDP.

The modwright mods have a significant improvement on the digital out of the player. If you look at his site you'll see that he rebuilds the digital out ciruit, there are benefits also from the damping and power supply work he does.
The great thing about mods and the 9000es is that the mods will benefit all formats Modwrights level 3 mods are $800 half the price of a fancy DAC and the modded 9000es kills everything in its price range. If you have no interest at all in sacd and wish to own a seperate dvd player than look at other options...the sacds are starting to roll out...
Also when thinking of a DAC for redbook on the 9000es consider the price of an extra pair of interconnects, a digital cable and probably a power cord. If you buy reasonably priced cables the cable cost will be at least $500 before you even lay out the $1500 for a DAC.
$500 will buy you a lot of mods.
A digital signal may be a digital signal but remember that jitter is jitter and power supply noie is power supply noise. Even a brief audition of transports will show you that there are large differences in quality. The 9000es transport is outstanding and it's internal dac not at all bad, with intelligent mods it is a versitile stunner that shines with redbook.
Asa side note Bel Canto is showing there new dac2 with 24/192 upsampling. Although the dac1 was alittle warm I have never heard anything regarding it being made to be used with older players? It is a nice unit if it suits your tastes and works well with a number of tranpsorts.

Dolphin: yep. soundstage depth.
NaT: I'm assuming that the person wants a DVD and Sacd capablility. For many of us, because of pricing, we've got to knock off two/three birds with one stone. That's why I like the gradual approach of the 9000 with a DAC eventually, and then the mods. It gives me two or three years in which to afford something special. I don't agree about the Rega planet being better than the Bel Canto. Why? System synergy for me. My components gained alot of liquidity and subtle nuance. I auditioned a Planet at home and it didn't fit my system needs. Now if a person doesn't want DVD or Sacd then by all means I agree, throw that extra 1k to the Jupiter, which I found to be a very expressive machine. Haven't heard the MF A3 so I can't comment.

I would definitely go with the Sony 9000ES. I've had one for a year now and have been immensely impressed with it's performance for all three formats and video too. For $800 used or $1200 new, you can't find a product that will do more or better than this. I just purchased a new Sony SCD-1 SACD/cd player (Sony's best). The SCD-1 comes very highly rated. Right out of the box I could tell SCD-1 was a more sonically refined player in just about every category. Enough to put the SCD-1 in a different league but just enough. I was impressed with the improvements in every category, but I was also surprised that it wasn't mor e of a night and day difference. Whatever league the 9000ES is in has got to be the best in it's league.

If the SCD-1 were a 9.5 on a scale of 1 to 10, then the 9000ES would have to be about an 8.5. I'm not saying the SCD-1 is a 9.5 because I simply haven't listened to many players. But I know that Stereophile rates it right now as a Class A+.

The 9000ES is built like a tank, can be modified drastically by Stan Warren co-founder of PS Audio for $250 or by Dan Wright of ModWright from $250 to $1600 depending on options. Based on one testimony, the Stan Wright mod brought about a 40% improvement in sonics. Stan himself will state about a 25% improvement.

If you go for the 9000ES, have it modified, configure it so that all the digital and video are turned off (audio direct button), and the display lights go out after about 5 seconds after you press any control button thus minimizing any digital or LED display noises, You'd have one heck of a player. IMO.

Hope this helps.

-John