If you still spin CD's their is a reference level Transport for reasonable money

I’ve created a new thread for the Jay’s Audio DAC as it’s unrelated to teajay’s original thread. 

Just ordered a CDT2-MK2 from Mike Powell in GA. Had a good chat with him this morning. My current player is just a TASCAM 500b which, hooked to an Yggdrasil (new Analog 2 board) via AES, has surpassed every expectation I had for CD playback. So I'm curious what an anecdotally world-class transport will sound like by comparison.

I've been on a vinyl bender for 3 years and for my tastes and preferences it offers what I want in terms of smooth, powerful sound with excellent dynamics and tonal texture. For reference, my vinyl rig is: GEM PolyTable Super12, AT Art9 with Namiki boron MicroRidge, into a Parks Puffin phono stage (which frankly sounds better than it has any right to given how it works and its price tag). Previous phono stage was a Herron VTPH-2. 

Anyway, I digress. I was shocked to find that the TASCAM + Yggy has delivered a few discs that I have on comparable, excellent condition, original vinyl and I preferred the shiny plastic. There are others that overlap in my two collections where I prefer the vinyl, so at no point am I thinking I want to switch completely, I just want to have roughly equivalent sources for both media. And I have also determined that I am now firmly in the camp of physical media. I have Roon and I have tried a MicroRendu as well as a HifiBerry and neither have come close to what I'm getting with a CD of the same provenance.

Should have the Jay's in a couple weeks, can't wait to see how it sounds.

I purposefully did not compare the Jay's Audio CDT2 MK2 with my analog rigs (VPI Prime and two Linn LP12 set-ups having different arm/cartridge combinations).

The SQ commonalities between my CD and LP playback front ends include an incredibly silent background and a huge 3-dimensional sound space.

Since I don't think I really made the point I was driving at when I set out on that post, my goal is to find my favorite recordings in their best form on physical media. And in cases where they are roughly equal, frankly I’d prefer to play the CD to keep wear off the stylus. To me it’s just gratifying to hear digital playback that has reminded me so much of what I love about vinyl. I had a very, very nice digital setup four years ago and it had its good points but it was more about "look what I can do" vs "how does this system make you feel?" If that makes sense. I actually feel some equivalence between the two formats now and that makes me happy because so much of what I’m after either doesn’t exist on vinyl, isn’t affordable on vinyl, or is honestly not so well-produced and translates poorly on vinyl.

Hope that makes sense :)