The lack of decent quality CD transports today amazed me as well until I started auditioning a number of transports from a number of manufacturers (Theta, EAD, Audio Alchemy, and Wadia) and discovered only nominal differences between them. These were used with a number of different DAC's (MSB, Wadia, and Bel Canto) and still I found no differences that would merit spending substantially more for one compared with the others. The differences between the DAC's was much easier to appreciate. Currently I use a Panasonic RP-91 DVD-A player with a Wadia 25 DAC in my reference stereo rig and it sounds great. Incidently, I also found no significant differences between the coaxial, balanced, and ST optical outputs in any of the configurations I tried. Off hand, I would just use the best reasonably priced DVD player available as a transport and invest the difference in program material or other components. Best of luck!
transport sound quality of good modern CDPs
Used to be they made big heavy expensive CD transports that improved the sound out of your DAC over a standard CDP transport section. Very few are made anymore, yet there are plenty of good outboard DACs on the market. The better one-box CDPs can often sound as good as redbook allows, yet most seem to use generic off-the-shelf ho-hum transport mechanics with maybe a little tweaking to the servo circuitry. So my question is two-fold:
1) Have the lightweight seemingly modest transports in excellent sounding $2-4K CDPs gotten good enough that their mfgs feel their sound can't be significantly improved by using a near-industrial-grade transport?
2) Would there be a notable sound difference by running the digital output of say a Musical Fidelity A308 CDP into a $5K outboard DAC vs running a Levinson No 37 transport into the same DAC? Or for that matter, a Rega Planet or NAD C541i?
1) Have the lightweight seemingly modest transports in excellent sounding $2-4K CDPs gotten good enough that their mfgs feel their sound can't be significantly improved by using a near-industrial-grade transport?
2) Would there be a notable sound difference by running the digital output of say a Musical Fidelity A308 CDP into a $5K outboard DAC vs running a Levinson No 37 transport into the same DAC? Or for that matter, a Rega Planet or NAD C541i?