best cd player for 300-500 bux

so u would think a good dac would help more than getting something like a musichall 25.2? ok school me on how a dac works with my exhisting cdp. i will be doing some research meanwhile. how does it hook to my cdp? sorry for the stupid questions im a pretty lowfi guy. have a cheapish audio innovations tube preamp, and signal wires with psb stratus gold speakers. thanks for all the replies guys. kevin

How do you make the cdp that i have not use the dac that is inside it now? I really dont think that my unit has a digital or a coax output. I will check it tomorrow night. I seemed to have lost something in my system recently. I had a really good effect of the sound coming from right and left of my listening spot but now its gone. All of the sound seems to be coming from the speakers now which really annoys me. Any ideas on what to check out in my system would be greatly appreciated. A song i always used was "vogue" by madonna the tamborine sound always sounded like it was coming from right beside my spot and now its gone. thanx for any info

thats the weird thing i didnt do anything. I just havent been messing with it that much since its drag racing season. My older psbs dont have any outriggers or spikes so i put my mapleshade plinths under them and that made things better but still no real 3d type sound. I even went and put in cable elevators just to make sure i wasnt getting something weird from my carpet and no luck. I tried toe in and straight. Reconnected all the analog wires. I dont know what gives. Could the tubes in my preamp need swapped out? any ideas would be great. Kevin

well i found the imaging problem. i had swapped out my power cord to my tube preamp because it seemed loose. i just used another junk stock one. well i put the one in that came with the preamp and it was like i took a blanket off the system. needless to say im upgrading my cords to the other equipment.