The point of the transport on the Olive is to make a copy of your CD onto the hard drive, not to play CDs directly from the transport. Using hard drive, in theory, is much better than a CD transport in terms of noise. HD proponents claim that it is better than any CD transport out there, no matter the cost. For us that's the most important aspect of HD based music servers, besides the unbridled convenience of accessing all of your CD collection in a matter of seconds. Long as your DAC has a USB connection, you can play directly from the HD. "That's all I have to say about that." - Forest Gump.