Just because an Oppo can play DVDs shouldn't be reason to rule it out. I have had several $500-1000 CD players and a $1000 Pioneer Elite DVD/CD player from Kenwood Basic (their high end line), Philips, CEC, Sony ES, and Audio Alchemy with Soundstream DAC (co-designed by Krell), and--purely for music-- my new little Oppo DV-980H trumps them all. It's sweet, smooth, and musical. One advantage I find in some of the universal machines is that because they're set up to decode 24/96 and possibly 24/192 DVD soundtracks, they upconvert regular CDs to good effect.
The Oppo goes even further. It can play SACD and DVD-A, and is one of the few players left that does HDCD. For the last year I've been playing vinyl almost exclusively, but the Oppo has enabled me to get back into playing my CDs and SACDs. It replaced a $600 Philips CD/DVD/SACD player and trumps it in every way. You can use it in a music-only system; you just have to hook it up to a TV screen once to configure it, and then it's set.
If you can go $100 over your stated budget, there's the new and even better Oppo DV-983H with cleaner and higher quality audio signal path. Both models allow you to defeat the video circuitry to drop the noise floor.
The Oppo goes even further. It can play SACD and DVD-A, and is one of the few players left that does HDCD. For the last year I've been playing vinyl almost exclusively, but the Oppo has enabled me to get back into playing my CDs and SACDs. It replaced a $600 Philips CD/DVD/SACD player and trumps it in every way. You can use it in a music-only system; you just have to hook it up to a TV screen once to configure it, and then it's set.
If you can go $100 over your stated budget, there's the new and even better Oppo DV-983H with cleaner and higher quality audio signal path. Both models allow you to defeat the video circuitry to drop the noise floor.