Using a lap top cd drive instead of highend cd player

Does the Audionote 3.1 have an asynchronous USB input? I guess that would eliminate the jitter which would typically be the issue with this set up.  

Well, not disagreeing that it will sound better than many CD players, but if you change the question to how do I get best sound out of my computer as a digital source then you need to consider:
- linear power supplies vs. typical wall warts
- type of cabling and specific cables of your chosen format 
- steps you can take to minimize electrical noise and RFI getting to your dac (e.g. google "Regen") 
- music playing software
- ss vs. mechanical spinning drives
- what O/S you run and all the non-audio processes that run and add noise to the music signal
I'm probably forgetting about 6 things, but you get the idea. It's a deep subject and few computer audio setups sound alike. Cheers,
Spencer

So I am missing something.

Apologies. I failed to mention I run a Prodigy cube (converter side only) in between the laptop and the DAC. A 75 ohm coax cable connects the Prodigy to the DAC and and USB from laptop to prodigy. The AN does not have a usb input. 

Standard Win 10. SS HD and foobar 2000 as a player.

Audionote DACs only 1x upsample.

I was just trying to figure out whether your DAC is slaved to the PC.  If so you could have significant jitter in your setup.  A good quality transport would be feeding the DAC with excellent timing.  

Thanks for all the input.

I had a look for a CD transport but found cd players and transports all listed together. What inputs / outputs are different on a transport and what connections must a cd player have to make it usable as a transport only.

Thanks