My best dedicated transport was a high end CEC belt drive top loader and it was very decent. However, moving to a Naim Uniti music server rendered that impotent by a large margin. Not saying it can't be done, but I question that much investment into a transport vs a credible server. Even more improvement with the Naim Core server.
Best of luck with your audio Nirvana search.
CD transports
I recently started running my CD player ( Luxman D380) through my external DAC and have found a significant sonic improvement. I wonder if I would achieve further improvement in sound quality if I traded in the Luxman and bought a dedicated CD transport ( price range 3-4 K ).
Has anyone gone down that rabbit hole?