I want a double- drawer- or- better *programmable* CD player, goddamit.

One which allows you to punch in, say, (some equivalent of) "-N" to mean
"play all tracks up to track N", and "N+" "play all tracks from N on",
and
"M-N" "play tracks M to N", all in programming sequences like "-J M-N P-Q
S+" (across different disks as well, of course).

(And I don't even have the spirit to put individual track level and--
ooh-ooh-- track crossfade control on my wish list.)

You want to be streaming your music from a computer, then.
Your needs are easily met, using something like foobar2000
to play lossless files.

Yes. And run the analog audio outputs from the CD drives directly to an
external amplifier rather than through the soundcard.