help a Die hard ANALOG guy choose a budget CDP

I feel your pain! Bought Japanese mini-LP set with a promo box of Camel,  and now they reissued all Camel  albums as SACDs! What to do, "what a poor boy should do"...

@fjn04

Responding at this point, I feel like I'm beating a dead horse, but here goes.

If you like the idea of playing a record, the ritual of looking through your collection, pulling a record out, placing it on the turntable and cleaning it, etc., you may want to go with a CD player. My advice in that case it is to go with a decent CD player, such as the Marantz 6006 and spend the rest on a DAC.

Otherwise, you should probably go with a music player or music server. Overall, it is probably going to cost more, but it has the potential of sounding better than the CD solution.

Let us know what you make your decision and what you actually purchase.

"... has the potential to sound better". 

Ummmm. more like NO QUESTION it will sound better.  You would need to spend AT LEAST 3-4X (IMHO) to better a DAC at the same price.

If you spend $1,200 on a CD player or $1,200 on a DAC, there will be NO comparison.  Once you take all the moving parts, laser, flutter, vibration, etc. out of the picture, you gain so much.