CDP or Transport and DAC? Recomendations?

With that budget in mind my solve would be to use the Apollo as a transport and spend the money on a DAC. I finally landed on the Merason DAC 1

I have an Audiolab 6000CDT with Denafrips Ares 2, could not be happier. Tried many combinations, most much more expensive, none were better.

Definitely a separate transport/DAC.  I’d ditch the Node and replace it with an Innuos Zen Mk3 streamer/server that will sound much better and also let you load all your CDs into it so basically becomes your transport as well.  Add a Musician Pegasus R2R DAC and you’ll have a very nice digital front end for about $3500.  Best of luck. 

In that price range I bet most players will have a good DAC built in. The obvious difference is with separate components you can choose both in stead of one. But this only helps if you have the opportunity to listen to different transports and DAC’s and can choose the ones that sounds best with the rest of your setup.

You could also consider to skip the CD’s entirely and utilize a higher end streamer and DAC than the Bluesound Node (which I think a wonderful component by the way). Combined with your (lossless) streaming subscription this may even improve the sound more.

@rudyb  In that price range I bet most players will have a good DAC built in.

This is quite right - however what is at issue is the transport.  For this you really need something dedicated, and that is the tricky bit.  This is the next logical step up the ladder.  Perhaps a few steps up.

With transports it is a 100% technical thing.  Which one reads the data on the disc the best, and whatever accompanies that rather functional task.  Traditional CD players have many other functions to perform, of course, and design compromises are made that are not an issue with a transport.

The OP was not asking about streamers.