Accessible, yet elite sounding, musical CD machines. Current vs next upgrade

@retiredaudioguy 

In the audio world an HDMI cable between a source and a DAC will be carrying I2S

Not in my audio world!  I use native HDMI to move audio from Reavon, Panasonic and Sony player / transports to my Marantz pre-processor.which has 8 AKM dacs.

The Reavon has Burr Brown dacs but high-resolution DSD is down-sampled to CD quality.

Australia is more aligned to the European way of doing things 

All this tech-talk tends to get in the way of enjoying the music.  I use the Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista CD player and digital hub for all my digital equipment. It has one bullet-proof Nuvistor tube per channel and sounds, well , very musical indeed,  Beautiful casework, too.  

As an aside mod wright, musical fidelity,and chi fi make tube buffers you can put anywhere. So you may get a fine cd player and add the buffer. I have alot of tube cd players  ar cd9,cary audio 306 200 has 8 burr brown chips,mcintosh 12000 tube or solid state,cary audio 600? I think.older california audio tech,technology, I have also bought newer modles under 2k. Have 20 spinners i have collected over the years. Some musical fidelity has tube like new sisters. Enjoy the science and the search. My prima Luna has a tube as the clock and does not sound bad. Do love the transport in my esoteric.

I have a Tandberg 3015A CD player vintage around 1982 sent it to my tech was told it is in fine condition and never get rid of it because it is one of the few that only uses one laser,. Yes it has rca outputswhich I plug into my Illusion pre-amp and it sounds wonderfull

I had a 35 year old Sony professional CDP and it sounded great, even better than my 0ppo. But unfortunately it died and being 35, no one would work on it, so I figured that with streaming becoming a bigger part of my life, I would cheap out and I bought an Audiolab 6000CDT and haven’t looked back. It gets used at least twice a week and except for being a slot loader, I like it a lot.