Crazy to buy a 17 year old CD Player?

I'll second the POV of the respondent who recommended OPPO.  Both the 105 and the 205 have state of the art DACs, and upsample everything to 192/24 and play DSD in native format, including (if you wish) multi-channel analog output. 

I love ARC gear (use some myself) but the OPPO makes virtually ALL high-end CD players obsolete, from a pricing standpoint as well as from a sound standpoint.  Don't be misled by those who claim it has to be wired into a home-theatre system.  It requires a simple TV connection for set-up.  Once that is done and you have it in "pure audio" mode, it is simply a disk player.

Question.   Why would you burn your entire budget on just a CD player alone when you can get a good unit and then spend the remaining budget on a nice DAC? Especially when you could possibly get a PSA unit that allows firmware upgrades?  I suppose it makes sense if you are absolutely sure the unit is going to produce a sound you are satisfied with and you don't want to mess with other hardware for some reason.

I am also in the market for a new transport but I did a quick compare with my current cheapo sony blue ray/cd player vs the new CA CXC transport and there was absolutely no compelling reason to switch.  I would really like to get my hands on a used PSA DSMP and see what that sounds like. 

I JUST ordered a amazing condition Pioneer Elite DV-79AVI to use as my main cd player.

heard good things. as long as it sounds better than my dv-48av and roteldvd-1040 and the 4 other cd players which failed on me in the last 10 months, i will be just fine.

its an old unit, but from what i hear, they are reliable, and sound better than 2-3X their price point!!

Thanks again to all who chimed in.  I decided to purchase a used Ayre C-5xeMP Universal Disc Player.  Will also explore finding a new laser to get the ARC CD2 up and going again.  It would do nicely in the bedroom, or perhaps recoup some of my expense on the Ayre.