Good CD player vs. Transport and DAC

The MSB Universal Transport, Platinum power base, Platinum DAC IV, and Pro I2S could be the final destination for a long, long time - although the base model DAC/Power Base, this MSB setup smokes the Modwright Oppo BDP-95 and the Esoteric K-03 from what I've heard) - but o-u-c-h the price of admission.

Just to clarify, are you looking for a CD player or a multi format player? Your original post says CD player. If thats the case, I think you are better off looking at something that plays CD's only. There's no reason to buy something like an Oppo that is designed to do a whole bunch of things that you will never use it for. More importantly, CD's need all the help they can get to sound good.

As far as getting a CD player or separates, that's a personal choice. Unless you are looking at something like Wadia or DCS separates, I prefer a single box solution. Generally speaking, with high end audio, things tend to get broken down into more separate, specialized pieces. (For example, instead of a receiver, you can go with an amp, preamp, phono stage and tuner.) If you look back to when high end CD playback was first getting popular, the general trend was just the opposite. To deal with problems like jitter, keeping everything in one box fixed a lot of problems. Of course, today, manufactures have come a long way fixing those problems, but for me, I still like a single box solution.

Unlike a lot of people, I have had very good luck with reliability issues. I've had CD players that were set on repeat for years just to break equipment in and keep everything warmed up. Never had a transport break. (Honestly, though, had I been more aware of some of the reliability issues that others were having, I would have shut them off, just to be safe.)

Some brands I would recommend, new or used, are: Ayre, Arcam, Wadia and Cary. I've had many others, as well, but the ones I list are my favourites.

I'm a fan of a high quality DAC, and then attaching whatever digital transports you like to it. Single-box players all require their own internal DAC circuitry, and that gets expensive if you want good stuff.

I absolutely adore my North Star m192 mkii DAC. I'm pushing bits through it with a Logitech Transporter, and an old Arcam Alpha Plus CD player.

IMO all digital sources sound equally good through a quality DAC. Claiming that one digital source sounds different from another is bogus. It's just a bitstream. No need for a Mark Levinson CD transport, just find a $100 cheapie with SPDIF output and only your pocketbook will know the difference. Cheers

"IMO all digital sources sound equally good through a quality DAC. Claiming that one digital source sounds different from another is bogus. It's just a bitstream. No need for a Mark Levinson CD transport, just find a $100 cheapie with SPDIF output and only your pocketbook will know the difference."

And here we have it; pure genius.

So from what I'm hearing you say is that the transport doesn't matter in terms of sound, just get a good dac? Not to sound redundant, but I'm using my denon dvd 2900 as a transport and using a musical fidelity v-dacII with an upgraded pangea p-100 power supply for the dac. If I want better digital playback, I should just concentrate on getting a better dac (a dac with asynchronus usb for future expansion into computer audio, I'm thinking, or I suppose I could just use the v-dacII for computer audio if necessary). Also, in terms of upgrading my dac, I have balanced inputs on my pre-amp that I'm not using...