Does the Transport make a significant difference

I purchased a Parasound JC 2 preamp. I will post my results next week.

A properly setup system will never place instruments as radically out of place as you mentioned. Images should never go from center stage to far left. That is not something that cables or equipment will impact to the degree you described.
either something was broken or it is hyperbole. No piece of equipment properly designed and implemented does this, period!

Please review what you have written. If this was actually what you meant you must consider my be point. Otherwise if you believe that a properly functioning piece of equipment is rearranging instrument placement your open to anything. Equipment can improve perceived depth or slightly increase width but an instrument going from 0 degrees axis to 65....well, that is not the way equipment works. 55 degrees to 60, okay....but 0 to anything else is an indication of something seriously wrong.

Raymonda,

Okay you win...I'm not going to argue with you about what I hear in my system. I try to be very careful about not exaggerating my findings. The facts are the soundstage has opened up and there is more spacing between instruments. I look forward to adding the Parasound JC2.

Actually, I'm not trying to win. Honestly, there must have been something wrong with your preamp to mess up your soundstage to such a degree...as you describe it, you were almost listening in mono. Since you still have the pre you should plug it back in and check out that it is operating correctly before you sell it.

I have no doubt you are hearing improvements and that your new pre delivers the goods. What I'm questioning is, what was wrong with your prior preamp.

Nothing is/was wrong with the preamp. I don't have a "new preamp yet"; I'm currently running the PS Audio PWD through the P5. Prior to receiving the new DAC, I was going from my CD player to the preamp. Now I'm going from my CD player via a digital cable to the DAC and from the DAC to the preamp via RCA cables. I won't say all of the changes are due to the new DAC, because I went from a unbalanced to a balanced cable, added the Wireworld Gold Starlight digital cable and changed speaker cables at the same time. I wished I would have changed one component at a time and maybe I could attribute the improvements to one thing.