Upgrade transport and lose Genesis Lens?


I currently have a Meridian 500 transport/Audioquest Hawk Balanced Digital Cable/Genesis Digital Lens/MIT Oracle Digital Cable/PS Audio Ultralink DAC. I noticed that when I took out the MIT Oracle cable from the Lens and connected it straight to the transport I got a huge boost in clarity. The sound was so much more cleaner and the pace was a lot faster. I was thinking is that because the Audioquest isn't up to par with the Oracle, should I just get another Oracle to get back that detail or would it be better to sell the Meridian/Audioquest/Genesis and get a new transport. I would probably have about 2,000 to spend on a used transport.
Thanks
128x128kleonard
just to confirm... going from transport (rca out) to lens(rca in and xlr out) to pre (xlr in to rca out to amp) ??
Going from transport to lens is xlr, from Lens to Dac is RCA and from DAC to pre is RCA
have you tried going all rca ? i would suspect there might be some degradation going between the different circut topologies...