Transports and jitter

For the hell of it, I tried using a DVD player that my daughter bought at our local drug store for about $30 into my PSAudio Digital Link III DAC.
I won't say that is sounded as good as my normal transport ( NAD Universal
Player) but it was pretty close.

When I was looking for a transport a year or so ago, I tried many and found all of them to sound different. Some better, some worse, but all made an impact. There was a thread on here awhile ago talking about transports and most all who responded heard a difference.

BTW, I settled on a CEC TL2. One of the best transports I've ever heard. Just wonderful.

Modern dacs seem to be much more immune to jitter, than the ones made 10 or 15 years ago. Better input receiver chips, Asynchronous Sampling Rate Converters (ASRC) - they all contribute to the better sound.

Nowadays, shopping in sub $2000 price range, I would probably spend 70-80% on the DAC (as opposed to 50/50 15 years ago), as that would give you the best bang for the buck. Basicly - any CDP with digital output will do, even a legacy one (DVD players are not that good, as they often fail to provide a bit perfect data at the digital output).

Will a better transport sound better ? Sure. But the same amount of money spent on a better dac would give you even bigger improvement.

Inexpensive, entry-level DACs like the DAC Magic, V-DAC, etc aren't going to hold up against your CD5 IMO. Your CD5 is an excellent player. I'd look no lower than the Rega DAC (I own one and love it), EE, and so on. I haven't heard the Schiit, but I'm sceptical that it belongs in the same class here. I also own a Theta Cobalt 307, which was designed by one of the Schiit guys. I mention that because he said he used a lot of the manufacturing techniques on the Schiit stuff. The Cobalt is rock solid and doesn't appear to have any corners cut regarding build, and still sounds excellent even though it's a 15-ish year old 'dated' design. However, it's not as good as the $1k-ish DACs. Easily as good as the entry level stuff in my system and to my ears though.

I'd expect the Schiit to be built well and sound very good, but I wouldn't expect it to compete with the $1k DACs, which is where you should be focused if you're looking to replace the CD5.

The transport makes a difference, but not nearly as much as the DAC. With my Theta DAC transports made a bigger difference, but with reclocking and stuff (as Elberoth2 said), it's become less important IMO. Spend the bulk of your money getting the DAC right, then experiment with transports.

As far as cabling goes, they also make a difference. Don't dismiss optical because just about everyone has the notion that coax is inherently better. A glass cable can sound excellent and save you a ton of money. My $25 glass cable from Amazon sounds far better than any high end plastic optical cable I've tried. Coax can get a little better, but at a very high cost. Which one you use also depends on the application. Computers, cable boxes, and stuff with a lot of electrical noise have always done better with optical when I tried it.

Just some info.