@jaybe - Cambridge Audio CXC transport. It's $499 at various large internet/mail order retailers. It has standard coax and toslink outputs and should work with any DAC that has those inputs. Maybe buy it from one of the retailers that has a solid return policy so you can return it if it doesn't meet your needs.
Are There Any Really Good $500 CD Players?
Time to upgrade my years old Marantz cheapo CD player, which works fine but sounds horrid compared to my server/DAC and turntable front ends. Even feeding the player's output into my $3500 DAC it still doesn't sound great. Understood everything is relative and more money buys better sound, but is there anything around the $500 price point that sounds at least moderately "high end"? I’d consider used as well as new.