Today all my CD player sound the same. When I was younger, I heard differences I didn't like. Then I bought another one that had a better sound, to me at least. The "bad one" was sold or given away, like some Rotel and Sony. Now I only have a handfull of identical sounding players left, the cheapest was about €450 when new. There is only one that seems to sound a little different, maybe because it has a valve output stage. The AMC pretends to have more room information, but all the others, from Onkyo Integra, Marantz, Teac and Denon are just identical, perfect sounding machines. Then there is this 100 CD changer from Pioneer, I'm not 100% sure it sounds fine. I simply implanted a digital output and use it with an external DAC, for peace of mind, now it sounds just as good, I'm sure...