A question of budget, of course, but the DACMagic deserves to reach fairly high (imo). If you want to go as far as US1k but not cross that line, a used CEC L2-X (belt driven design) might be tempting. I recall this machine as one of the quietest drives a couple of years ago. Also, you might want to look at cdps with the illustrous Philips CD-Pro2 drive on board.
