Cd player

Jay's Audio CDT-2 MkIII, it's a great transport and definitely ups the SQ game. I own an Audiolab CDT-6000 (which is a very good transport), but the Jay's blew it away. It's what I'd buy as of today, but I'd definitely test the Teac 701 as well. 

If I2S is important (which it is for me as my Denafrips Pontus II sounds best with this input), then the Jay's Audio transport is the better option.....the Teac does not have an I2S output.

Get the CEC TL-5...belt drive transport....with your MAC DAC it's perfect....

+1 @ghdprentice

The Audiolab 6000CDT is an excellent transport and really inexpensive. You don’t want to spend too much in my opinion cuz once you start streaming you going to be spinning CD’s less and less. Rip all your CD’s onto an external SSD and have your own library as convenient as a streamer.

I have a Teac 701 and a Jay's Audio CD3 Mk III. They both sound great. I'm not sure I could tell them apart in a blind test but they are both excellent pieces of gear.

The Jay's is built like a tank and it uses the latest drive mechaism that Phillips made. It upsamples by 4X which is a nice feature because your DAC's filters may sound better at the higher sampling rate. It has a downside if you own and collect HDCDs as I do. At standard sampling rate (44.1) it uses dither in the first bit which prevents the DAC from decoding the HDCD signal. The CD will play fine but you won't get the benefit of the HDCD encoding. It's an absolute pleasure to use and I smile every time I drop a CD into it.

The Teac 701 is also a very nice unit and half the price of the Jay's. It uses Teac's VRDS mechanism which is one of the best available. It plays HDCDs fine and it it also plays MQA CDs. It does this by doing the first unfold to 88 khz and then the MQA DAC does the rest. If you think you might get an MQA DAC (I don't know if the Mac has this feature) the ability to play MQA CDs is nice to have. I bought a bunch of MQA CDs to try it out and some of them sound much better than their standard counterparts. The best example is the remastered series from the Doobie Brothers. The difference is astounding. I'm sure that this was mostly due to the new mastering but the difference is revelatory. Other titles like Anita Baker, Rapture, sound very similar to their regular counterparts. I'm running a Berkeley Alpha Reference Series II MQA DAC.

The Shanling looks like a very good option. It uses a Phillips mechanism and it has a lot of nice features. One other option would be to get a SACD player and use it as a transport. Something like a Marantz KI Ruby or their newer SACD model would make an excellent transport and you get the ability to play SACDs. The built-in DAC may be better than the one in your McIntosh.

All of the above is predicated on the assumption that you like physical media. I have Qobuz, and it sounds great, but I find myself using it to audition new music before I buy the CD or vinyl record. I collect physical media, especially audiophile versions, and I get a certain satisfaction from spinning the physical music thingy in a nicely built machine. 

I love how some of you advocate screwing artists....er.....I mean streaming.