Esoteric P5/D5 Opinions please

The stereo sound survey is a bit odd in that counts "stars" (out of 5 I believe) a component receives from its reviewers then adds up the # of starts total to get an overall score that decides the ranking...the problem is not all the reviewers vote on all the products while all reviewers vote on any product they have reviewed or wish. Thus not comparing like for like as the # of reviewers can end up the deciding the ranking quite easily...and thus the ranking loses much meaning. However, the mag does provide which reviwer ranked which product how many stars so the reader can make his/her own deductions.

I am using P-05 Transport (upsampling frequency Red Book Audio to 176.4kHz) and Weiss Medea DAC (Swiss Made) with dual AES/EBU input. It's clear that P-05 out perform my reference Burmester CD transport 979 ($15,000 USD) in terms of detail retrieval, imaging and when it comes to dynamics.
P-05 Dual outputs digital signal XLR (left + right) lest you suspect that this put the other CD Transport at a disadvantage!

has anyone here tried using a different transport other than esoteric's to connect to the D5 ?
I read that a large part of the p5/d5 excellent performance comes from the D5 converter ?

Also, what would be a better move: buying an xo-3se or a D5 using a cheaper transport ? ex would be something like a nad, cambridge or cec player with digital output ?

tks for inpts

nolitan, i use the D5 with both the Esoteric P3 and a Sonos digital music source. My personal feeling is that the transport makes more of difference than the dac (assuming you are comparing decent quality dacs). That being said, I would get the x-03se rather than a cheap transport and the d5.

Tbooe,

Tks for reply. I'm thinking that myself.
Other thing about the D5/P5 is that one need to use two sets of balanced xlr digital cable which can be quite costly + two sets of power cables.

I think the x03se would be a better choice in the end rather than the separates.