Best CD Player for 800-1500 Used

Buy one of the used Ack dac's for $300 and mate it with a $45 Toshiba 3960 DVD player and you will have a CD player far above what you expect and as good as any mentioned above. I have owned the Arcam, Opus 21,AA Prima, Consonance 2.0 Reference and this combo is every bit as good. yep, spend only $350.

Bill

Ditto on the Audio Research CD-2 mentioned above. How about the good old Sony CDP-XA7ES? I just listed my Audio Research DAC-5 for sale hereon. I believe it to sound slightly better than the CD-2 when connected to a decent transport with a decent cable (at least in my system).

I would go for a Monarchy DAC/preamp and a transport of your choise such as a Vecteur, PS Audio, CEC.

Second Grannyring's idea.You can't beat it for the money, or a lot more. I'm using a Tosh 3950 with an Ack dAck and when playing CDs it walks all over my $2K Sony XA777ES.

Where do you get a Toshiba 3960 for $45? A Froogle search returns
prices around $69.

I did see RAM Audio mods the Toshiba for $375 for a one box solution.