cdp soundstage

That's odd since CDs have a MUCH greater signal to noise ratio.

As well as much greater channel separation, of course.

I recorded from lp onto disc and the soundstage shrank big time.

What was doing the A/D conversion? Quality A/D conversion is technically more challenging (and more expensive) than D/A conversion of similar sample rate and resolution, and also can require a good deal of care to get a clean analog signal into the converter.

the naim just doesnt present a very wide or deep soundstage in comparison to my turntable

Just a wild guess, but are you sure you have absolute phase correct through the cd path? If any of the components in that path invert absolute phase (meaning they invert the polarity of both channels), I'd imagine that might have some effects on perceived soundstage.

Regards,
-- Al

Just to make sure that what I said about absolute phase is clear, I was not referring to the connections being wrong.

Reversing the plus and minus of one channel to the speakers, for instance, would mean that RELATIVE phase is incorrect (relative between the channels), which would produce totally and obviously messed up results for all sources. That was not what I was referring to.

An ABSOLUTE phase problem would mean, for instance, that a dac or cd player internally inverts the phase of BOTH channels. The effects of that would be subtle, and not immediately obvious, but could conceivably account for the symptoms you described. Whether or not a component does that is usually not described, but you might want to do a Google search using the model number of each component in the cd path, plus the phrase "absolute phase" (with the quotes).

I have no specific knowledge to comment further on your question about transport and dac synergy or alternatives.

Hope that helps,
-- Al