The dramatic improvement you seek could easily be provided by the NuForce products. I love my NuForce amps and their transparent sound. They replaced a 3K tube amp in my system. NuForce customer support is also a dream come true.
There may be no reason you have to wait to solve your CD playing solution:
Many of us are using the Squeezebox 3 from slimdevices instead of a CD player. It hooks up to the stereo and plays your CDs but with the help of a home computer (which I am assuming you already own). This $300 plug and play solution has a very readable display (volume is remote controled, of course) and it also has built in wireless and talks to my computer in the next room, where my entire CD collection now resides on a hard drive. Great sound, no wires, instant access to my entire library. This is the future, and it works!
No more CD's and those crappy jewel cases, hooray. To top it off, the sqeezebox sounds better than my fancy tube CD player which cost over 4x as much!
For the music,
