Remember if you choose a dac you need something to feed it, such as a computer or transport or streaming device. Those devices also have a big influence on the sound. It seems most design work is going towards dacs and not cd players. The reason for this is the future of music playback is streaming. If you have a lot of CDs you need a transport or cd player or rip all your cds to a computer. I have 5000cds but almost all of my current listening is streaming Tidal from my laptop to my dac. Sounds great
Alan
Alan