Once you hit a certain level of transport and DAC coupled with very clean amplification, good cabling, speakers, etc...the differences are pretty easy to hear.
Listening and comparing a couple sub $1000 transports probably won’t tell you much.
So the sub $1000 transports pretty much sound the same? Even on a system with very clean amplification, good cabling, speakers, etc.? That’s quite an accomplishment in consistency it would seem. I’d get the impression that the bad transports would sound much more different in their various flaws, while the more perfected transports would become increasingly difficult to tell apart as they approach perfection.
It’s conceivable that the cheap transports all have pretty much the exact same flaws, and it’s only when somebody makes an attempt to get past those practically uniform flaws that the differences become apparent. Each maker uses different approaches and gets slightly different results, but all are better than doing nothing at all. Maybe it’s kind of like adding coatings to lenses to reduce color abberations and glare. One maker might use a coating that looks blue, another purple, or orange. They all give slightly different results, but all are better than just leaving the lenses uncoated, which would be cheaper and perhaps fine for a lot of users.
I think the coated lenses analogy is pretty good, and one that I can relate too in my recent experience. My previous glasses had coated lenses. My newer ones do not. There is definitely a difference, but for the most part I’m seeing things just as good without the coatings as I was with them. Uncoated lenses are worthy of the best frames you might want to get with them. I’d also argue that a cheap transport is worthy of the best sound systems out there. Whatever a cheap transport’s shortcomings are, it’s never going to be the weakest link in any sound system, unless it’s just downright malfunctioning, or makes too much mechanical noise.