in the heyday of CD all the Jap brands had a flagship player that maxed out on the engineering side (whether it mattered or not). They were statements of what they were capable of.

There were also 'battleship' players from various expensive boutique brands that really were just transports and DACs bought off the shelf from Sanyo, Sony or Philips and put in a fancy case.

Now the world has moved on, CD market is now very small compared to streaming so no more statements of excellence in the world of CD players.

Alan is right a dedicated transport and a contemporary DAC is now the way to go, you can do that for £500 brand new and is actually on a par or better than the flagship players of yore, some of which I still own.