Does the Transport make a significant difference

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.

As a recording engineer, when mixing from multi-track sources I take particular care on where instruments are placed within the soundstage. Regardless of wire, cable, DAC or any other electronics I could never shift an instrument around from 0 degrees to any other place without using my DAW. For the life of me I can't see how this could happen. Imagine Jimmy Page playing his guitar straight in front of you....and then magically....without any movement of source components his sound magically appears 20 feet to the left. He didn't move....nor did his amp...speaker or for that matter the room he was playing in. You have to move the source itself or change the acoustics of the room to get a shift in source placement.

I'm not trying to be a pendant but something is wrong electronically for that to happen. Again. I would check your cables....if you are using balanced cables maybe your right cable has a short and you have essentially lowered the voltage in that channel...thus shifting your image to the left.

It could be something else for that matter....but you really should look into why this is happening.

Best of luck.

Ray