Okay......best single box reference CD player

Nothing comes close to Analog. But I will answer your thread. Audio Research CD7 is a darn good player. It is the best I have heard. I am sure there is better out there.

I'm not convinced that there is a best.

I suspect very high end CD players may just reassemble the bits in unique ways that helps differentiate the resulting sound and justify the price, but I'm not sure that any of these variations are necessarily better or more correct overall than others...just different.

There is only so many bits on a CD. IT doesn't cost a fortune in my opinion to build a CD player capable of reading most of them correctly without loss (computer cd drives do this all the time) and then use them to correctly construct the analog waveform needed prior to hitting the amp.

My vote is split between Spectral SDR 4000s and Metronome Kalista integrated.

Ahhhhh...after all of this, I think that I will keep my dcs Delius and Purcell and have Nick Gown at True Sound make a few updates on my CEC TL -1 transport. Like a divorce...sometimes it is '' cheaper to keep her ''.

dCS Puccini, simple as that.