the CD player is more or less a “solved problem” these days, so as long as it has a digital output and is actually outputting 44.1khz (or an integer multiple) not 48 or anything weird it should be bit perfect and a decent DAC will give you the same output as a high end CD player.
The only differences between physical players tend to be minor things like physical noise (that’s a big one! cheap players are loud), speed of seek/start, degraded/scratched/burned disk readability etc.
Personally I use an older budget DVD player as a CD player, it has a coaxial output and connects to my receiver digitally. it’s only downside is it is physically loud, as opposed to the last CD player I had that was completely silent, but it was an overbuilt, heavy Krell unit.
the CD player is more or less a “solved problem” these days, so as long as it has a digital output and is actually outputting 44.1khz (or an integer multiple) not 48 or anything weird it should be bit perfect and a decent DAC will give you the same output as a high end CD player. The only differences between physical players tend to be minor things like physical noise (that’s a big one! cheap players are loud), speed of seek/start, degraded/scratched/burned disk readability etc.
Personally I use an older budget DVD player as a CD player, it has a coaxial output and connects to my receiver digitally. it’s only downside is it is physically loud, as opposed to the last CD player I had that was completely silent, but it was an overbuilt, heavy Krell unit.