Better CDP or network player?

been reading lots of reviews.....my eyes are watering...still can't decide what to do. I could get a great DAC for the money and use the outputs from my CDP.......the 8001 isn't dead yet, just beginning to get flakey...and if it dies, which all things do, I could, as suggested, pick up a very reasonable used player that had digital outputs and get on with my day..............also use it ......I think....to play downloaded music files......I'm a pretty smart guy, but kind of a babe as far as downloading music, streamers, players, NAS, etc..never got into that before, stuck with one box solutions...........Music Direct has the Marantz SA14s1 on sale for 1999 and the DAC can be accessed separately............can you download music files to your PC and then to your DAC?......I did say I was an idiot about these things!! LOL............Is that a "better" option than going with  a network player?...............Sorry, I know a fair amount about audio  but this is virgin turf for me....duh..........I'm always behind the curve, didn't get a CDP until the 90's, so I'm always playing catch up.

With the SA14s1 you can't download your music to the player it doesn't have an internal hard drive. You can connect a computer to it. You can use usb sticks and external hard drives but it looks like it would be a pain to use those since it plays files by date so you would need to basically fast forward through them to find what you wanted. You would need another device to stream from your network to attach to it.  Download the manual from marantz it explains what it can do. 

I see that Marantz still makes the 805 SACD/CD player and that it goes for under $1000.  I had an earlier iteration of this player, the 803, which would only play digital inputs as MP3, and wound up selling it for the Oppo 105, which also served as my DAC for a while.  The Marantz 805 can be used as a full DAC.  If I could spend the OPs money I would buy the Marantz 805 and the Bluesound Node2 or if the OP wanted to have the CD ripper and storage then the Bluesound Vault2 and still be within budget.
  It’s fun to spend other people’s money, isn’t it?  Now I understand the appeal of working in Government 

OP—reading your last post I see that you have a little confusion here and djones51 addressed it well.  At the risk of being pedantic, what you are seeking is:
1) A CD/SACD player that can also be used as a DAC.
2) a server, which takes files stored elsewhere and plays them back.
3) A CD ripper to creates these files from your CDs
4) a hard drive to store these files.

All of these can be purchased separately, but several of these features can be combined., potentially even in 1 box solution

mahler + djones

Thanks folks, it's getting clearer. The hobby was so much easier when everything was simpler, must be getting old..........OK, I guess that's a given.  LOL

Yes, it truly is fun to spend other peoples money. Spent my career working for defense contractors. What the GOV spends on electronics makes all but the most stratospheric audio gear seem like pocket change.