My suggestion, since Linn has dropped the production of his entry level cd player.
I've got one of these, had it a year. It's really,really good. CD fights vinyl pretty hard with the CD31 in my house. Really tough as you say, even poorly remastered CDs sound good. All my CDs sound so much better compared to the Marantz CD6000Se I had before. It's about £1500 which will be over budget here though.
Well there's always the next one down. the CD21; still very, very good.