Big source improvement using CD player

Bite me, Mr. 4 H Club 🍀🐄

My Esoteric SACD player with the VRDS NEO transport is one of the best transports out there used with the BB pcm1704 R to R ladder DAC gives me far better sound than streaming from any source.  If I am feeling lazy, then I use the music server, if I want to listen to my system at its best, I use the Esoteric player.  
George, am I on the right track?

To the OP I copied all my discs to flash drives I connected to my roon core on a NUC I assembled and I don't hear any difference between the ripped version or streaming Qobuz. Same for playing the CD so I sold my player any new CDs i get I'll RIP. If you still want to spin CDs there are plenty of good players around. Marantz, Cambridge are a couple that come to mind.

If I am feeling lazy, then I use the music server, if I want to listen to my system at its best, I use the Esoteric player.
George, am I on the right track?

Yes you are, like many others that have found out and gone back to "a good" CD transport to listen to, not a rubbish one with all it’s error correcting and jitter.

Some just can’t see (hear) the forest for the trees, they have their heads up
https://www.ripleys.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/ostrich-head-in-sand.jpg

Cheers George

Or you could join the world in 2020, and realize that what was true in 1992, when flash memory was $100/megabyte, ram was $30-40/megabyte, and a good DSP was at least $20-30 is not the same world as today, when I can get all that for a couple dollars in reasonable volume, and it is more than enough to handle enough pre-buffering to never run out due to minor speed fluctuations from the transport, and would do so at far less power (i.e noise), than even the ECC chips in late 80's, early 90's gen processors.

Some people are lost in the forest, and are quite happy to be there. Problem is, they want to drag other people into the forest with them.

Stereo5, most likely is that Esoteric sounds the way you like. Not technically better than another DAC, but sounds the way you like. Playing off a local SSD or memory card offers the potential for far lower noise than the electronics required to run a CD transport and error correction/interpolation. Rip your CDs to storage, and many programs will tell you exactly how many uncorrectable errors there are (if any). Many will even take multiple passes in an attempt to get an error free read. Everything is done "offline" so any transport or other issues disappear. At that point, it really comes down to the DAC, and if integrated, you pretty much eliminate any jitter from an optical or electrical interface.