If your whole system costs $40,000....

Excluding speaker cables, ICs, and power conditioners et al, I have three systems that meet your criteria. For the CDP in each, the cost percentages are 8.2 %, 11.4 %, and 22.1 %. Figures are based on retail costs for new gear and what I actually paid for vintage gear. The CDPs were all purchased new; two of them are current models.

Survey:

"how much will you invest in CD player with that sum?"

Answer:

As much as it takes so that I enjoy listening to the music thru it. It so happens that at this time, it's around 10%.

I would consider it foolish to limit myself to a certain % of say, at or about xx%. I once put an extra system together a few yrs ago that paired a $900 2a3 SET integrated with a pair of %550 single driver speakers. Those are "msrp" prices, not street or used. The CD player was $3000. That works out to 200%. I really enjoyed it. I doubt I would have with a $150 (10%) player.

Personally, I would never spend more than about $2000.00 for a new CD player, no matter how good the rest of my system is (I assume you are using cost as a proxy for quality -- always a risky assumption in this hobby). I've had any number of CD/SACD players (I bought my first CD player in 1984 or 85, I'm not sure which, at the "breakthrough" price of $400.00), with purchase prices all over the map. My experience has been that once you pass $1500/$2000 MSRP, the incremental increase in reproduction quality is so ephemeral, and subjective, that it doesn't justify the expense. I wouldn't be too surprised to find that we have folks with $40K systems out there that are happily tooling along with $700 or $800 CD players.

YMMV

Some of the folks here just answer exactly what I am asking, especially the recent post of MAPMAN, its around 10%. I am not going to use it as a limit, but I just want to know what is happening in others situation.

My CDP is SIMAUDIO CD 5.3x as some of you were asking. I am not sure how good it is, I haven't change to other cdp since I put up my systems 3 years ago.

My gears total up $29000 retail excluding cables ICs, and power conditioners.

Welcome and look forward to more post of your spending experience......

p.s. I may start a new thread to consult all experience fellows if I want advises for solving my system issue.

I recommend the PS Audio Perfect Wav system. Hi rez memory player DAC combo ($6K). For an additional $800, you can buy the music server piece for the DAC. For best sound I recommend a turntable setup, but that will cost you much more when you consider a good table, arm, cart, phono-stage and records of course. I use the Perfect Wav for my occasional digital playback. Hard to beat that combo for the money, imo.