Best CD player under $2000

Thanks to all for the input, very much appreciated. I do plan to keep the Jolida DAC for now, so a transport is really all I need. Have read/heard good things about the Audiolab CDT 6000, yet not sure about the slot loading over a tray or even top load unit. The Denafrips will be something I look closer at. Goldnote Koala, Granite Audio 650/657, Line Magnetic 215 are CD players I have been considering. Bryson and Electrocompanient are probably out of my price range, even used. Sony ES, OPPO, Rotel, Marantz, Ayre all give me more to search out.

Any CD player you buy will be lower in quality than a Tidal HiFi stream. Tidal HiFi is loss-less so your cd player would have to play each disk with 100% perfection every time to achieve the same outcome. For $500 you can get a BlueSound Node 2i and then with the remaining $1,500 you get Tidal Hifi for 6 years.

That said, I’m keeping my old 30 pound battleship (Sony CDP-620ES) for the extremely rare occasion that I can’t find what I want in Tidals’ 50-million song library or on YouTube. The unexpected benefit of being easily exposed to hundreds of great tracks that I never would have found without streaming is just icing on the cake. And I didn’t have to go shopping, wait for the mail, or think very hard about it - I just clicked on a link.

Also, you can stream to any portable device so add a portable external dac to your ipad or phone with a good pair of headphones and you’re streaming high quality away from home. Tidal is just one choice; there are several good services and anything loss-less at 44.1Khz or more will be as good or better than a CD.

Ear Yoshino Acute

Best CD player under $2000 is NO player at all. Just rip all the CDs to FLAC files.
I have an old Adcom CD player which luckily has digital (coax) output, I let the external DAC (RME ADI-2 DAC) do the job of converting digital. But I hardly use the CD player at all.

I agree with what @alymere said before, except that I'd recommend Qobuz instead of Tidal for true lossless and Hi-Res. Tidal uses lossy MQA a lot.

Get a cd transport if you like your dac.  All the cd player does is read 0's and 1's and feeds that signal to the dac of your choice or the internal dac of the player.  Just find the transport or player that has parts for repair for the years to come, running a NAD from the 90's.  I've had it for years, best ebay find for me.  Cost 150.00.  Feeding whatever dac I choose.  Good luck on your journey.