Arcam CD23 worth saving?

You really owe it to yourself to audition.  The only reason to keep this player working is if it had the Ring DAC on a chip.  Otherwise, everything is better now.

Yes it's certainly got the ring DAC, that's what makes it a little special. I must admit I do like the new Ifi audio burr brown signature DACs sound so I'm thinking of potentially buying a transport and a separate DAC. I also like the new ESS Sabre DACs as well like what's in my MOTU audio interface so I'm definitely conflicted here. The Arcam has a certain smoothness and finess that the new generation seem to lack though...

I'm used to listening to studio monitors as well as hifi so I'm torn between clinical and smooth if you get what I mean.

I'm not sure if it makes financial sense but I owned that cd player and it's a gem. I get it.

Cool, you know where I'm coming from then! Probably ought to ditch it but it sounds so good...

Ladder D/A converter are limited to about 18 bits because of components tolerance, while Delta-Sigma converters go only to about 20 bits, because of noise.  Ring D/A converter was developed by DCS and licensed to Arcam.
Instead of just one component at LSB it has bunch of them being switched at higher speed to achieving better average accuracy.  Unfortunately ARCAM had poor production yields and stopped making them (switching to Wolfson).  Original Arcam that had them was Alpha 9 that FMJ CD23 is based on.   I think it is unique and good sounding - worth of saving.