General transport Question

You hear a lotta reasons as in less jitter, no interference from analogue output sections, less vibration etc. that stand alone transports sound better than the digital output of a CDP. In all the transports i've owned, when compared to similar priced and even higher CDPs, the transport in every case sounded better. Compare the heralded Sony SCD-1 used as a transport only and compare it to Forsell, CEC, MBL, Acoustic Arts, Barclay, Esoteric P2, Audiomecca and the Sony in all cases comes in a dismal 2nd. Your Dac is high quality and tremendously musical and deserves a stand alone transport to reach it's potential.

Sundance45: Did you actually listen to the Sony compared to each of those standalone transports and hear the Sony that far behind the others? I have what I consider a top-notch DAC and my little dismal Pioneer PD-65, with or without the Genesis Time Lens, does a mighty fine job.

Hello, Eric!
I am also wrestling with this question at this time. My humble opinion is that what matters most is the lack of jitter emanating from the CD player's (or transport's) digital interface and not whether the machine also has DACs and an analog output stage inside it as well as a CD transport mechanism. The problem is, as far as I know, there is no way to know what these jitter numbers are for most machines out there. I have been trying to determine if my Sony CDP-XA7ES is as good a transport as a Sonic Frontiers SFT-1 and there is simply no information, or even opinions on this question out there. Common sense says that the SFT-1 blows the Sony away in spite of the Sony's transport mechanism being a work of industrial art. But where is the empirical data?