HI Peter,
I would try a transport for around $1000 with a DAC for the remainder. For that money you can buy many dacs, and audiotion.
Here are some examples:
1. Ack! Dac
2. Scott Nixon Tubedac+
3. Museatex bitstream
4. Museatex bidat
5. Benchmark dac-1
6. ECD1 by electrocompaniet
7. Classe dac-1 (used)
8. Blue note Ag dac
9. Muse dacsAnd many many more. I suspect all of these would sound better than a standalone CD player, as long as they had jitter reduction (many of these dacs do already, for others you can buy a jitter reducer ).
hope this helps
thanx
-akhilesh