I am of the belief that you can get excellent CD performance from a decent DVD player. Yes, certain players tend to have better audio performance than others, but that being said, a DVD can have very good performance.

I have found Cambridge Audio to have very nice CD / audio performance, but they are somewhat expensive.

If I were you, I would purchase an Oppo DVD player. The 981 gives you incredible video performance, and great audio performance. The 970 gives good video performance, and excellent audio performance. They are also universal players (dvd audio, sacd, hdcd, etc).
www.oppodigital.com