Pioneer Elite Transport or Rotel?

hard to say without testing both. I have a Pioneer Elite DV-09, and while it is an excellent DVD player, I was somewhat disappointed in it as a standalone transport when tested against a couple of reference cd players and transports into my Audio Note dac. I know I shouldn't have been surpised, guess I was just hoping for more...

Yeah, why not just A/B both side by side and post your results! I would be very interested in your appraisal and will perform a similar shootout soon with the same dac. FWIW, MF claims any cheap transport will work with that dac very nearly as well as any big buck one will, and Atkinsons' test data would seem to confirm that, but we don't listen to test equiptment....

Also, don't count Pioneer out based on the name, the stupidly expensive cd players and transports abound aren't made from scratch, many source from Pioneer for a large bulk of the players internals. Even for those well over $10K players reviewers rave about you'll see much on the inside with a Pioneer or Sony sticker on it....