My Sony blu ray player (BDP-570) will play a cd if I hit play after turning it on immediately. But if it's on already, and I inset a cd it can go to the home or menu. Then I need to toggle over to the music submenu and then disc icon. I can't do that without having the monitor(projector in this case) on and it's annoying.

So I can see the need for a dedicated cd player. Being that Owl is going to be taking the digital feed straight to the 975, any reliable cd player would do fine, because he's not employing the analog or DAC section of the player itself. I'm not familiar with his short list options, I'm sure they would be fine.