You really won't find them in Best Buy; people who go there are the sort to raise their eyebrows when they find out that CD players are still being manufactured.
Try Magnolia, they might have some Onkyo and Denon, but of course any product line well below the flagship will tend to be seen as 'mainstream' still by some audiophiles' standards. Which means you really have to ditch chain stores, research the brands and units from reviews, then look up the dealers near your area, and chances are these aren't chain stores that you'd have noticed just driving through the streets they're in. The most obscure I've seen them in (to save on rent) in my city are in the basement of an old mall that's borderline dilapidated, right next to some gun stores with a similar operating strategy. To this day it still baffles me that audiophiles who can afford $2,000 cd players (so guess how much the whole system costs) would really put up with a mall whose toilets are a few steps removed from a typical, non-corporate-owned gasoline station in the middle of nowhere. Well, OK, I do, but I'm 27 and not rich; but every once in a while rich bankers walk into that place fresh out of work in their Italian office attire.
As for good DVD player SQ, you;d have to shell out more. Used to be there was the Pioneer DV-6xx series and that one time Philips widely distributed the slim-type that played SACDs, but I don't see these anymore. Also, the DV-6xx players cheat on the SACD playback - they downsample them to PCM first. The <$200 you spend on these would be better put towards more serious source units, like the Oppo universal disc players, or even dedicated, audio-only (if not redbook-only) players.
Edited by ProtegeManiac - 12/21/11 at 7:30pm
