30 year old player, worth an upgrade?

Why not keep the Marantz as a transport and put all your money into a separate DAC ?

The CD40 does not have digital outputs. It is the cheapest Marantz player that has the TDA1541A chip.

Thank-you for all the responses. At the moment, I have no intention of going separates but all 3 players under consideration have digital outputs so running them as transports + DAC in the future is possible.
In Malaysia where I am from, used hifi market is not as big and dynamic as that in the States, so a used Apollo for example will not be an easy find.
The price of the players I listed is equivalent to around USD650 for the NAD and Bada. The Marantz CD6006 would be 40% lower given that it is an used item.
So I guess my budget would be around USD 650~ 700.

with the CD6007 released, prices are good on the CD6006 and it should way outperform your CD40...I always found the expensive Sony DVD players to make lousy CD transports...

Good to hear that the modern Marantz should be better. This will make me less hesitant to upgrade.

@oldaudiophile
thanks for sharing!

It just occurred to me that my BADA amp has balanced inputs. Upon further checking, only the BADA HD23 player among the 3 under consideration has balanced outputs. Is balanced connection almost always superior to RCA? A downside of the BADA player is that it hasn’t got usb inputs but that shouldn't be a deal breaker for me.

I’m still using a 1986 Denon 1500 and still sounds great! I have friends with newer CD players, only one can match the sound, most can’t compare. I attribute this to 1500’s Brown and Burr DACs !!

@dgb553
I am sure the Denon must be very good. I learnt something new about this player when I googled for this Denon 1500: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/a-legendary-classic-the-denon-dcd-1500.214154/

Looking at the pictures of its internal circuitries and parts , I don’t think the Marantz CD40 is as good, components wise.