What is purpose of a cd transport?


Some people say that a certain cd transport is "good." How can one cd transport be "better" than another?
Isn't their job just to hold/play the disc?
samuellaudio
Thanks Shadorne. It's refreshiing to read such interesting posts especially your link. I get tired of reading repackaged marketing goop masquerading as fact. - Jim
Does the apple airport express provide a quick enough & accurate digital signal for DAC purposes?
In my system, it certainly sounds like it does.

For a published, numbers-based opinion, go to Stereophile's website and search on Airport Express for a 2005 John Atkinson commentary. He says the AX output is bit-by-bit identical to an original WAV file. (Note that this also means Apple Lossless compression is bit-perfect, since iTunes streams everything to AX in AL compressed format.)
Crudo20,

I have no doubt that the digital output from the Airport Express will be perfectly faithful to the digital data that it receives from a PC. The analog output, however, is unlikely to be as top notch as you might get with an expensive DAC or CD player, but probably good enough for most needs; like feeding various built in speaker zones in a "smart" home (I use my Airport Express to feed a Russound Amp in my utility/boiler room, which feeds five separate house zones).
Crudo2,

Here is a link about the airport express

http://stereophile.com/digitalprocessors/505apple/

...perfect performance with 16 bit 44.1 Khz digital out (standard CD digital)
Thanks for the link Shadorne. I think I'm going to go for that and then find a DAC to run it through. I keep reading about the death of CD and it seems that I'll be content with digital for convienience and analogue for quality. Now I just need to find a reasonable DAC - it seems that audio mirror da-1 isn't listed for sale anymore.