Musical cd plyer under 1k

without a tube, you will not get "musical"

i have an old audionote cd2. i'll take that over almost any other cd player in production.

i owned the jolida player. i tried many tubes, but did not like what i heard.

I bought a new Sony 595 SACD player at Best Buy last year. I'm using it until I get my dac, which I will then use for computer usage. I think for the price ($120 new), it sounds very nice. I only have 1 SACD, sounds good, but the other regular cd's sound good also. This is a rather warm player, I hear lots of detail from my cd's, and also is a multi-disc player for convenience. I don't think it's up there with $1,000+ players though. The soundstaging isn't all that great, it's also not real smooth, but for the price, it can't be beat. (IMHO)

I also recommend the Nad, its a rock solid performer.

I'd third the NAD. NAD is really awesome gear on a budget and they rarely if even have to go in for repair. The easiest days of audio for me were the NAD days.

I'd second Naim (CD5, CD5i, CD5x) -- with the caveat that they don't do 3-D imaging. Very natural and organic sounding players, though.

I second the NAD

a gently used Raysonic CD-128. Check out the 6moons review below ...

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/raysonic/cd128.html

Bought my Resolution Audio CD50 about 8 years ago and went through a phase of trying to improve upon it with newer technology. The Jolida 100 was one of the cdps that briefly went through the test along with at least ten other players at various times.
None of them matched the musicality of the CD50. It is an older player built to a very high standard with an exceptional analog section. I stopped looking for a better player and bought an extra laser assy in case mine goes out.

Naim cd5 used, very musical

I think the NAD 565BEE is a very overlooked CD player.
It's very musical. I had to spend $2000 to get a better sounding player.

Sony 595, from SonyStyle as a refurb, often for $60.