Arcam CD23 worth saving?

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.

Thank you, that's a very note worthy reply. I did think it was a bit special... I'll see what the repair estimate comes back as and make a decision from there.

Can it be used as a DAC?  If it has a digital input and if it’s the DAC that makes the player special then try using it with another transport.

No it can't be used as a DAC unfortunately as it only has digital out otherwise I'd ignore the transport side of it. That was one of my first thoughts but it's just too old.