If you still spin CD's their is a reference level Transport for reasonable money

Sim Moon Neo 260-D transport with a 10-year warranty and never look back. 

Hey Brian,

Because I'm lucky to do professional reviewing I have owned and reviewed what are considered reference level DACS.  However, the quality of the CD transport can/does make a significant difference in the quality of what your DAC finally puts out.  Yes, you can use a CD player, if it has digital out option, as a transport to drive an external stand alone DAC, but the quality of the performance would still be effected by the purity of the bit stream being put out by the transport, not just the DAC itself. 

Hey d2girls,

Regarding the PD-S95 transport I never had one in my system, but do know they are highly regarded.

It's funny that you mention the Sparkler transport, I tried to setup a review on it with the importer, but it just never worked out.  

I am sure this machine sounds nice but  it is over-engineered in at least with respect to vibrational damping.  There seems to be a widespread belief that increasing mass will get reduce the impact of vibrations from a spinning cd, lp or even from transformers.  I am sure it has some benefit but as opposed to a flimsy machine most metallic materials do not actually dampen anything rather they transfer vibrations nicely to the next part they are attached to and ring quite nicely which they would not do if they actually damped vibrations.  

Getting rid of the vibrations means converting them to some other form of energy which will not shake your circuit boards and the like. That is what materials like sorbothane do, convert the energy to heat. I have had very good results adding this material to a range of players from Woo transports to $40 portables.  (not to mention headphones and speakers)

That said, I am not a fan of the various sorbothane footers sold for this purpose.  I have had far better results  using small ( 3/4 inch sized) 1/4  self-stick 70 duro or 1/2 inch glued with Lord 7650 adhesive.  I apply this near the playing mechanism and near transformers.  Also small thin pieces can be applied to the clamping mechanism where it  presses on the cd. This is more tricky since the disc may stick to the sorb in some players or block ejection of the disc. The effects are revelation in sound and cost about $2-3 per player, a ridiculously cheap alternative to paying thousands.  

I have note that the sorbothane route is not unique to me.  For example I note SME is applying some kind of constrained damping (which means a visco-elastic material  with a backing, sorb is one of such materials) to its tone arms  "Internal constrained layer damps minute residual vibration leaving the tone-arm acoustically inert."  I noticed they also applied use various damping procedures to their extremely heavy and expensive turntables "  the duration of a vibration can be shortened by suitable damping.......This control of vibration is fundamental to the design of the player and goes much of the way to explaining the stunning tonal and dynamic neutrality that it exhibits." (bold added) http://store.acousticsounds.com/d/94863/SME-Model_2012A_Turntable_with_312S_Tonearm-Turntables  This form a $20.000, 74 lb unit.  They clearly understand that mass alone will not solve the problem.