DEDICATED CD PLAYER $1K AND UNDER, THOUGHTS?

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.

Well, I just snagged a mint Opportunity universal player for the one box solution angle. I can always add the day down the road. Thank you all for the great input!