anyone have experience with tube cdps'

The Lector 7T is one fine CD player especially when you roll some Telefunken 12at7s in. I bought one as a backup but it sounds so good that I use it most of the time.

In my experience, a tube output does nothing to make a CD player sound less "digital".

If you did not find the Rega Apollo to be laid back, you are definitely not going to find any of the three players on your list to be. They are all much more forward and engaging than the Rega.

I have two tube CDP's and while I prefer them to all solid state CDP's the difference, honestly, is pretty marginal. If you don't like digital sound the only solution that will guarantee a big difference is to go analog.

The best tubed CDPs I've heard (and owned) are the Shanling CD-T100 and the JAS Audio Musik 1.2. The JAS Audio unit is especially good value, with a good transport and a really nice sounding output stage.

All CD players I've had, tubed or ss, were improved with aftermarket power cords, antivibration footers and especially, isolation transformers on the AC supply. An iso tranny doesn't have to be expensive (see eBay) and it can remove considerable roughness from the player's sound, especially in the HF.

I tried a Jolida JD100 once (unmodified), long time ago, it sounded very natural...only criticism was it lacked a bit of detail. I simply assumed todays players would have improved on that. It was great on vocals. On the SS side I liked the Linn Majik cdp but it's 3k...ouch!!