how can a cheap cd drive equal a fine transport?

An "error correction" concerning terminology :-)

By definition, "error correction" CORRECTS errors in the data that is read from the cd, producing a bit-perfect result. That occurs routinely and frequently, with both computer data cd's and music cd's, and is performed by the cd drive electronics, invisibly to the rest of the computer or transport which the drive may be part of, and invisibly to the user, and with no adverse effects.

What can cause adverse effects are errors that are severe enough to be uncorrectable. If the software or hardware that is controlling the drive does not make possible the multiple retries that have been mentioned above, or if those retries are not successful, the result may be (depending on that software or hardware) an indication of an error, a refusal to continue any further, a gap in the music, or "error interpolation," which is essentially a guess as to what the data should be, based on the values of nearby samples. If the cd and the drive are in good condition, those things will happen rarely, and certainly FAR less frequently than error correction.

See this Wikipedia writeup, and note particularly this sentence:

The result is a CIRC (Cross-Interleaved Reed Solomon Code) that can completely correct error bursts up to 4000 bits, or about 2.5 mm on the disc surface. This code is so strong that most CD playback errors are almost certainly caused by tracking errors that cause the laser to jump track, not by uncorrectable error bursts.

Best regards,
-- Al

Between 2.5mm and 8.5mm (12,000 bits) CDP interpolates and above it just drops (gaps).

The best transports produce a data stream with less error, or jitter.

the above statement is the flaw in your thinking, Lloydc (the jitter part is right tho'). The fact is that even the $35 el-cheapo DVD unit from Walmart will read a disk with zero errors (just like the transport for a $10K CDP). As Al indicated in this thread & Kijanki in another similar thread, these drives are packed with some very effective error correction algorithms that will zero out any errors within a certain range - 2.5mm to 8.5mm as indicated by Kijanki. So, bit stream is going to be perfect with cheap or expensive drives.
Where the expensive drives win big-time is their ability to read the disk with zero errors and at the same time not corrupt the power supply voltage during the read, minimize jitter, prevent disk wobble, etc. All these fine attributes of expensive drives are valid when you are playing back a CD real-time - these attributes prevent "digititis" in the listener.
These attributes are less meaningful when your playback method is computer audio. You've already ack that you understand this bit so no need to repeat. In computer-based audio, you worry about other things: disk speed, ensuring that you bypass KMIXER in Windows, ensure you are doing WASAPI in Win7, USB-to-SPDIF/XLR conversion, etc, etc.