CD Sound Quality -- please help educate me

there is a lot of information on wickipedia under compact disc and redbook cd. i would think a newer cd player would have a superior dac in it than a 20 year old cd player.

Cd is 44 kz period. Remastering at a higher rate still meaans at the final stage the information is cut back (sometimes in a very sophisticated way) to 44kz.
All the magic words off 24/96 etc do not mean a thing. It is smoke and mirrors!
SOME of that stuff does make a Cd sound better. But it is always going to be limited to 16 bits at 44 kz.

Saru, You are concerned with software sound quality?... yes. You have good taste in music?... yes. You know the names and model numbers of your components?... yes. You can spell, form proper sentences, and form paragraphs?... yes. (this last one is not an essential requirement, tho) The good news? You are in audiophile!! The bad news? You are an audiophile!! Enjoy

This was well before they discovered the deleterious effects of jitter.

You would indeed benefit by purchasing a well recommended used player that is not more than 5 years old.

Cambridge 540c used (from 2008) would be a good choice but there are many good players and the differences between one digital player and another are much much smaller than between one speaker and another.

Rule of thumb for high quality sound => invest most (for example half your budget) in speakers as they tend to perform very poorly compared to electronics - so usually this is where most of the distortion and coloration happens.

Get yerself an SACD player and a nice collection of SACDs.
I love SACD.