Have DAC’s improved for Redbook CD playback?

I play a lot of redbook CDs off my ARC Ref CD-8 CD player.  The CD-8 was discontinued in 2013, but still sounds very good to me.  

I would appreciate hearing from some of our tech members, but here's a lay person reaction.  Redbook CDs are a 30++ year old technology.  I am open minded to the possibility that redbook DAC technology got better.  That said, I am somewhat dubious that if one has a recent'ish very good CD player, that current redbook CD player/DAC technology will take one to a new quantum higher level.  

BIF

Been checking out streaming sources and was thinking about a DAC for that purpose.  I currently own an ARC Ref CD-8, which uses a Burr-Brown PCM1792 chipset D/A converter.  As to the OP's question about whether redbook DACs have improved much, I found the following Stereophile ARC CD-9 review interesting. 

 https://www.stereophile.com/content/audio-research-reference-cd9-cd-playerdac

Notably, Fred Kaplan made the following introductory comment:  "Now entering its fourth decade, the Compact Disc player seems to have reached a stage of maturity where the best models within a given price range will sound pretty much alike."  

Some may agree; some may not.  At least from Kaplan's perspective, some of the redbook CD bells and whistles that ARC incorporated into the CD-9 didn't make a whole lot of difference.

Based on that review and comments elsewhere, if I wanted to stick to redbook CD, I am not sure how motivated I would be to pick up a used CD-9.  That said, Kaplan commented that the streaming DAC features of the CD-9 were pretty impressive and offered quite a bit of utility and flexibility.

As I mentioned above, I have been toying with the idea of using streaming digital music as another source.  If go that route, I may upgrade my CD-8 to a CD-9 for the DAC features only; not for expectations of quantum leaps of performance in the redbook CD side of the house.

BIF