I need help - Better DAC or NEW CD player?

Thank you Al for the clarification. The Benchmark is a great DAC and can be very revealing- worth the trouble. After experimenting with one for the better part of three years, I keep finding ways to get more out of it, hence my initial post about transports mattering. I purchased a hiFace usb>spdif for hi rez (async type like ayre requiring drivers) computer use and noticed it took the usb up a notch. This lead me to experimenting with different connections on it including using my Weiss DAC as a firewire to spdif converter. The only reason I posted in the first place was that if I hadn't tried different transports (and then servers), I would have sent my first Benchmark back. The first transport I tried was an Oppo DVD player that I was looking to replace the DAC section w/. Well, that Oppo (the original), and my current Oppo (983) both suck as tranports, and yet are very servicable with video and as cd players. The same thing with an higher end 50# copper clad SACD player. Of the five transports I tried, 3 were "dull", and the best was a $40 cheapie DVD from Best Buy with an awful picture that lasted 6 months before it quit. I have a hard time imagining that only one was "bit transparent". I also know that it isn't just galvanic isolation as I have tried optical USB and it sounds different than toslink from the same server. In all of these I never had any clicks, spits or sputters (until I tried Pure Music- another story).

The Benchmark was a ground breaking product in my mind, but is not infallible. It can be sensitive to power and its input- both of which Benchmark claims isn't. Ultimately what does one expect for $1000 in this hobby anyway?

Regarding Sufentinal's comment:

"...unless you get one of those relatively rare CD players that does have digital inputs."

This is why I recommended the Cambridge 840. It has an excellent transport, power supply and chassis, better DAC's and electronics than the DacMagic, and the ability to play disks or serve as an upsampling DAC for external transports. In it's price range, it is a "relatively rare CD player" in terms of sound quality, versatility and value.

The company has been on a roll lately, and my guess is that they will be coming out with the successor to the 840 soon, probably called the "850". So the 840's may be available new at discounted prices soon, and a new and likely more capable player will also available to purchase at a price point near the previous model.

To provide one person's opinion on the DacMagic versus the DAC performance in the Rotel 1072 - there is no comparison. The DacMagic is much more musical, with better PRAT and overall resolution. Not a horizontal moove in my opinion.

That said, the Cambridge 840 is more natural and "analog" sounding than either.

The cambridge 840C is also one of the options I had considered, I have both a better CD player than the Rotel and a "seemingly very good" DAC looking at the specs, the chipset used and the fact that it also upsamples the signal. Considering the selling price of my almost new Rotel, it would be a very little amount of money to get an used 840C, maybe 500 bucks. To get a good DAC I am looking at 1000 bucks and still will have a "questionable" CD transport, so I am looking at 1000 bucks for the DAC and and possible CD transport change. Now it´s where the rule of diminishing returns hits me hard in the head and I question how much of a difference could I notice between the 840C and a transport with a DAC such as the benchmark or the wyred4sound one.....

Some people have pointed out that the 840C is a little thin sounding, but I also plan to experiment with a tube buffer, last week I ordered the Grant B283 MKII buffer just for kicks (to use it between the CD player or the DAC, whateven I should choose)

On the other hand, I am thinking that for only 500-600 bucks I could upgrade my Rotel in the meantime, use the 840C as standalone player and later get a better DAC and use the 840C 24bit upsampled output to the new DAC.....does this sound reasonable?

The Cambridge did not sound thin to me when I heard it. That might be partially due to the quality overall of the system I heard it on. It impressed me as much as any player I have heard.

It fruitless to assert that all source devices are created equal in any case. That's not what I'm saying.

Timing can be an issue with transports or optical drives reading optical media in real time fast enough to apply error correction and keep the bits flowing. Music servers that avoid real time reading of optical media to provide the audio datastream and devices like network music players that cache data locally before sending to the DAC help assure that all bits available from the source media get captured and sent in time.

In the case of the BEnchmark, I suspect that there are many source devices at all price points that sound essentially the same, more so than otherwise. Which ones specifically do and which ones do not? Try specific units and find out I suppose.

But I think I would apply the strategy that I would not assume I need to spend a lot or even more in order to find a suitable source with the Benchmark specifically as perhaps might be more the case with some other DACs.