Best sounding CD player

@beeswax , "Man, I am really SICK AND TIRED of people doing everything but answering the question."

You are spot on.

And honestly, if people think their $600 CD transport is the "best", and "punches above it’s weight", a "giant killer", "competes with players 10X it’s price" or whatever BS they want to put in there, well, they obviously don’t have a lot of experience with high-end CD players. They’re not even in the same ballpark with some of the brands mentioned here. But I guess if the rest of their stuff is at about the same level of quality, well then, how could they know any better? They're probably not going to hook up too many $10k CD players to their $1200 amplifier to actually see if they can hear any differences. Know what I mean?

This place can be a joke sometimes.

@dvdgreco 

 Do you have a budget limit, and are you still considering a one box CD player? 

The Sparkler s515 I mentioned  is a two box set up, power supply in one box cd player in the other. About 2k

Nagra CD player. Separate transport and DAC which share a power supply. Musical and involving. The sound of analog.

The Nagra transport made Burl DAC sound better compared to using Oppo as transport.

DAC in the Nagra CD player as good as Nagra HDX cuz hitting the limit of what 16 bits can do.

* Ditch the power supply that comes with the transport for the Nagra MPS that comes with the DAC.

Pitily Nagra no longer makes this CD player.

Hi res streaming sounds better than CD but what if internet goes down? Also Qobuz has never made a recommendation that I like. It is gr8 to have that vast selection at yr fingertip.

I have moved on from CDP to CDT + DAC.

I have many of the above in my home system but have heard intentionally made the time to receive demonstrations of many of the Brands on offer in use in other systems throughout the past decade or more. 

In the past year an EAR Acute CDP that I can receive demonstrations in use regularly, on a system I am familiar with has proved to be an exceptional CDP.  

The Nuprime CDP-9 (w/LPS 212 Linear power supply) is the best CD playback I've ever had; fantastic CD player for the money-

pawsman