Best CD Trans. under 1,500

Be careful of buying a Theta Data Basic. Mine stopped reading CDs after 5 years and I have been told by a Theta dealer, two high end repair shops, North American Philips (who manufactured the part) and Theta HQ themselves that the part is no longer manufactured and that the unit is unrepairable.

My money would go to a sony 777 SACD. Those have digital outputs but also a good quality dac. new for 1600ish.

That seems a little high for the CD-T1. I have the ARC CD-2 player and really like it. I saw one on this site yesterday or the day before selling for $1900 (3500 new). I agree with Jcbtubes in that you should stick with a single box player unless you intend on buying a seperate DAC in the future. JMHO.

I'd recommend that you consider just a high quality CD player, rather than a transport and the DAC in the ACT-3. A used Cary 303 can be found at about the $1500 range. If you intend to get a much better DAC in the future, then the separate transport may make sense. However, a Electrocompaniet EMC-1 at about $2300 used, will compete with the best separates in the sub-$10K retail range. In reality, it competes quite well against my 20K+ Goldmund separates. Just my .02.

A used Theta Jade at $1100 - 1500 would do very nicely.

I am not familiar with the ARC unit you are considering. I have spent some time auditioning and owning different transports.
My vote for the best value in a used transport, providing it can still be serviced, would be the Theta Data Basic. Honorable mention would go to Parasound CBT 2000 which I bought because I could not fit the Theta in my cabinet.
For fun at a low price I would recommend the Aiwa XC37M changer which I bought for $90 at J&R Music World. You can only use a toslink cable on it (get the Monster Lightspeed 2M). This is a changer which is much better transport than its price indicates and it can be modified for better performance. Use the search mechanism to read the other threads on the Aiwa and other transports.