Having just upgraded to separates, I would say the deciding factor for me was flexibility and performance. I needed to get a separate dac anyway for me to send my digital music to anyway. If I was going to get a separate dac I then thought about using my current cdp as a transport only. But I did not like the idea of "wasting" the other features of my cdp. I figured I could sell my cdp and get a transport only device with better performance. I also preferred to get a dac and transport combo from the same manufacturer. I was also able to get the newest version of a dac from Esoteric that has the new AKM 32 bit dacs which I wanted to try. Anyway, for me separates made sense.
