$1000 maximum digital purchase coming up

It's hard to give a really useful response to questions like this. All of the digital sources you ask about sound really good in many people's systems. An equal number will say that same model was improved upon by something else from the list you mention. Reviews of each of the dacs you mention give ready clues as to where each excels and how their particular attributes might help compensate for or enhance certain aspects of a given system. When I switched from a Cambridge D500se to a Cambridge 640 for a transport, there was a huge improvement in playback with my Assemblage dac, so synergy is important. Predicting this synergy is probably difficult though. You realize though that if you spend $1k now on a dac and you upgrade your transport in the future, you're going to end up with more like $2k invested in your digital front end. You'll spend either $150 at minimum for a good digital cable, or you could get by for $35-$40 on a generic glass toslink that sounds almost as good. So comparison of audio payback with a $1K DAC and a $1k cd player isn't really fair in the long term. One thing to consider, a dac has a long life span. I used an Assemblage DAC2.7 through the lifespan of two cd players that were transports and it's still going strong without a hiccup. Some people have had cd players that function flawlessly for ten years, but that hasn't been my experience. Two boxes take up more room in rack also, that's one reason I switched to a one box player.