CD player NOT made in China under $1,000?

Rega and Oppo might be in your price point...

But if you are looking for great sound, I would seriously look into a good DAC, like Benchmark's DAC? and then use what you have as transport?

VERY hard to find a good HiEnd HiFi player for under $1000, from any country. But then again, i have expensive taste...

I am Taiwanese, and i'm very involved in Taiwanese manufacturing field, so I try not to buy Made in China products (such as ones you see in WalMart).
But if you are talking about Chinese 'HiFi', hard to beat the Chinese. Brands such as Opera/Consonance/Cayin are very reputable, and even well received in Japan, especially so if you are talking about analogue/tube based hifi equipments. I have to say...They do sound GOOD.

It is misconception that Chinese workers are uneducated and unskilled. Underpaid, Yes. But the Chinese have VERY highly educated workforce. (well people in the coastal cities...)

And if you are talking about outsourced products, Chinese are not going to over engineer something, they build to designed spec. They would only do enough QC/QA as needed to meet specified price. If you want something as cheap as possible to satisfy mass American retail market. You want junk, they will give you junk.

Spoolyt -
"You want junk, they will give you junk"

- completely agree. There is a factory in Korea called "Samic" that manufactures guitars (largest in the world). Assembly lines are totaly automated and everything is computerized. They built about 0.5 million instruments a year. Most guitars come from them. When they build expensive guitars for Gretch they dial different woods and hardware than when the order is for cheap guitars.

Not only that PC boards inside of "Made in USA" electronics are assembled in China but also semiconductors come most likely from the fab in China, Inodnesia, Singapur, Korea etc.

Once, when I felt very patriotic, I bought Ford. Thing did not work as I expected (it was a disaster). Now I have Toyota Avalon that just had first brake job after 12 years and 100k miles. No single problem or repair, just oil changes (looks and drives like new). It was built in Kentucky. Both cars were made in USA but Japanese design and used materials were better.

I bought recently Metabo Drill. It was the only company still manufacturing at home in Germany and very proud of it. It says on the handle "Made in PRC" (Peoples Republic of China).

Johnk, the point you make is most valid.

As the importer of a line of Chinese gear, I can speak with authority in saying the failure rate of their CD players and solid state/hybrid components is so incredibly high as to be difficult to believe.

In the industries I come from, a 1% failure rate is utterly unacceptable; enough to launch us into a frenzy to determine the problem, then rectify it immediately. However, in seeing 75% failure rates in the aforementioned categories, one is lead to the conclusion that something is clearly amiss in terms of the design of the components, and not only their execution and assembly.

The sad reality is that we have entered the age of the CNC, where a beautiful chassis can be rendered by a third party, providing the illusion of build quality, when in fact, the business end of things - what is actually inside of that nice box, is pitiful.

Trelja - where do you see 75% failure rates? Cambridge Audio manufactures in China and there failure rate is not so high. Cambridge design engineer once told me that manufacturing their gear in UK would raise price 2x.

CNC is a good thing. People hand made stuff for ages because there was no other way. CNC is more accurate and repeatable - not to mention production cost. There is still a lot of gear hand soldered but we move toward SMT and SMT automatic assembly machines in China are the same as in US.