Please help me figure out what I need to do this. My head spins with tech talk..

@abstract Please just be aware that Audiogon members include manufacturers and retail dealers who are free to post in threads without identifying themselves as such.  They are familiar to regular posters here.

You must have arrived at Sim Moon by some process of elimination.  They are a very good and reliable company, who will stand behind their products.  Another Canadian company with a similar reputation is Bryston, who also make a stand-alone single box CD player.  There are more still out there than you might imagine.  If you're only interested in Red Book CD, it eliminates one extra box and the vagaries of connecting the two boxes with a cable, at which point people will immediately tell you you need a better cable.

@abstract Please just be aware that Audiogon members include manufacturers and retail dealers who are free to post in threads without identifying themselves as such. They are familiar to regular posters here.

I forgot.

Empirical Audio

I would like to add something. your at the cross roads here, you need a new CD player. Tthis is dead or soon too be dead tech, at this point you should seriously consider moving away from spinning cd’s and go with one of the many storage-server-NAS-all in one devices. With the kind of budget your talking you can get a top sounding DAC and a Streamer network assessing player or get something like the Bluesound vault2 or Aurender players they take all your cd’s and store then internally and can stream- network access. This is a better way to spend your money in my opinion as CD player prices in the used market will crash sooner then not as everyone moves to a digital storage system of one type or another. This will also allow you to upgrade DAC's as you like. one thing to remember digital storage has no moving parts that wear out so potentially longer life expectancy.