CD upgrade.

I would look into the Ear Acute. The new model has digital inputs, which is cool if you care to fool around with computer audio. The older one, without the digital inputs, is a great buy on the used market.

I would look away from ANY CD player and towards a DAC.

Thanks the the replies, guys. Audiofreak, any suggestions on dac? Can any cd player be used that has an optical output be used as a dac? I have in storage an old marantz cd 63 ki. i recall from my days of using it, it would even read the most scratched cd without problems, something the droplet doesnt do if the cd is sufficiently scratched. i suppose the marantz would have its limitations in this regard too. would a dac be able to play computer audio ( mp3, flac) with the sound quality a high quality cd player? i want something really good sounding that i can use for a few years. Anyone have further suggest for a really nice sounding cd player> Thank you.

A few relatively low priced ($1,000 US new) current CD/SACD players with digital inputs that many people seem to like are:

Sony SA5400ES (recently discontinued)
Marantz SA8004
Oppo BDP95

Digital inputs allow you access to the DAC inside the player from other sources, such as another transport or a music server. You really should get a player with digital inputs so that it doesn't become obsolete if music servers take over for cd players, which probably will happen one of these years.

The Oppo is a universal player BluRay, SACD, CD, DVD, DVD-A. It's got all the bases covered.

There is probably a lot of opinion on each of these players on the forum. A search will give you lots of reading.

The optical output on your cd player is digital out. It is for sending the digital bits from the Droplet to a different DAC (like the ones in the players above). I think optical is going out of style as a digital connection. I don't think that the players I mentioned above have an optical digital input, but I could be wrong.

Hope this helps.