Different CD Player

Well the Marantz and Meridian players are a different direction from the Cary sound. IMHO, it would be a upgrade, but some may disagree. The Cary is more neutral and transparent, while the Marantz/Meridian will be richer tonally and more musical. Whether it is an upgrade is up to you.

John

I auditioned the Cary 303/200 in my own system and although it was good, no contest against the McCormack UDP-1 Deluxe which I tried and kept.

The McCormack is ULTRA clean and neutral, neither warm nor cold and has a precise, very clean and pretty top end. With the right CD's it's very listenable, which is saying a lot for me as I am very partial to LP's.

The McCormack does respond very favorably to interconnect and AC cords so if you get one on a trial basis, plug in a few of your favorite brands to determine what works in your system.

If a McCormack Deluxe is out of your budget new, snag an older (non Deluxe) version here at Audiogon and return it to the factory for the Deluxe upgrade. I think that's about $500.00 and supposedly after the factory is done there is no difference between the earlier and later version. Good luck !

I don't think it would be much of an upgrade, if at all.
The Cary is pretty good, IMHO.

I think going up to an Audio Aero Capitole II would be an upgrade, as would a few other players, especially some of the modded Denons or the modded Resolution Audio Opus 21.
(Although, I am not sure about any of these as far as reading cdr's. I know my (unmodded) Opus 21 sometimes has trouble with certain CDRs, but with other CDRs, it doesn't.) If it were me, the AA Capitole II would be the one I would get.

It would help if you were to give us a budget, so we could make appropriate recommendations.