Personally, I think you might be better off with a dedicated player, and either use a passive preamp (especially a transformer-based unit), or something like the Ultimate Attenuators from Ric Schultz @ EVS, www.tweakaudio.com.
This allows you to get more selection, and I would think that the volume control on a player may be of lesser quality overall. It would require an extra set of IC's, but that's not a huge deal.
Just my thoughts....as for players overall, there are many to recommend if you wan to go the route above. Mod'd units often give a lot of quality for the money....
Lots 'o' luck,
Todd - chams_uk
This allows you to get more selection, and I would think that the volume control on a player may be of lesser quality overall. It would require an extra set of IC's, but that's not a huge deal.
Just my thoughts....as for players overall, there are many to recommend if you wan to go the route above. Mod'd units often give a lot of quality for the money....
Lots 'o' luck,
Todd - chams_uk