Looking for a CD / SACD player. Also, tell me about Esoteric

Like restaurants, I like a great cheap eats place that's BYOB and the same with higher priced offerings, where the food and presentation are more refined, I like to find that really special (at least to me) audio component that is both reasonable, dirt cheap if I'm lucky and those products that at this stage of my life I simply want.  I have three very different CD, CD/SACD players as I write this, one  I paid $80.00 for recently and am enjoying quite a bit.  It's an unmodified version of the first CD player I owned and was a modified from a long defunct company, "The Mod Squad" at Music by the Sea, a Steve McCormak and partner business.  The CD player was stored away well for decades and looks and operates like the day it was built in 1986.  I just never seen one in this condition and working. In a lot of ways, I enjoy it almost as much as anything I have owned.  Like when I found an unopened complete Wagner Ring of the Solti/Vienna 58-65 recordings.  I mean, what's the odds?

   I'll say this though about the Esoteric Audio machines;  They're simply in a different league.  They sound like a master tape.  And every step up in the line I can hear the differences. So if I had the "scratch" for their top tier stuff, if you ask me if I think it's worth it, I would say yes.  I also think the Spectral SDR-4000 whatever iteration it's at now is an incredible machine. I don't know if SACD is necessary with these top tier devices, recently compared Dire Straits "On Every Street"(a great disc in every way) from a CD I paid four bucks for to the Mofi recent SACD issue, and I prefer the CD more.  And I'm finding I like many standard issue CDs more or the differences are not enough to spring for the SACD counterparts.  Also an acquaintance who is much more audiophile than I am just took delivery on a Ypsilon CDT-100 CD player that are built to order (eight months).  I've heard great things about this machine and can't wait to hear it. 

@rbyington71

"A CD is a spinner and a laser so what does a 12k Esoteric do that a $1,200 Marantz doesn’t."

I’m not going to waste any time explaining the differences in specific components and the fact that there are a plethora of machines that I haven’t listened to or maybe not even heard of as there are components that either do not or rarely ever make it to our shores(I have a Romanian audio buddy who fills me in on that stuff who really knows much more about that kind of equipment). Kind of like being mildly a car buff; knowing about Ferrari, what a 911 GT3 is, and then finding out that there is a world of Koenigsegg’, Pagani’, Fractal mathematics used in design(Rimac), and a host of other small independent companies or even large businesses, Volkswagon, Ford utilizing small teams of creative engineers pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in auto design, so in audio. The same passion exists in audio, actually almost anything in life you can say that about where someone out there has a better way of expressing that kind of passion. My $80.00 CD player gives me some part of, some flavor of, a taste if you will, even if it’s a minuscule bit of what a top tier component can do, but it is not the same thing. In some ways it betters, well sort of, kind of my mid-level machine that’s much more than the eighty-buck player. But that’s a whole other discussion and I’d be typing all day.

I know that it might be difficult to be able to listen to a wide range of systems, and products in parts of the country and given enough time auditioning them to get a real handle on what’s what. I have been into this hobby since high school, that would have been the seventies and even in the last few years I still am learning new things. Some of the most important things I learned was to be a better listener; not just to music but people as well.  Also to trust my own instincts.  My initial reaction to a product tends to be the right for me, even if I figure it out later. I always liked Linn and Naim's audio advice to sales staff doing demos of any equipment. You do the best demonstration you can and if the customer doesn’t hear those differences in components you’re demonstrating, don’t try to shove it down their throats!