Dedicated CD Transport vs DAC

I have owned many DACs, streamers. My first very good dac was the Schitt YGGY. From there Denafrips, Pontus, and Terminator 12th. Streamer, every Eversolo model , Hi Rose 130,Aurender n200 and N20. My experience is this. The Dac makes the most difference. However I found it not about being better, it PRESENTATION. It’s what sounds good to you. For example the terminator is,more expensive than the Pontus, but I, preferred its sound over the more expensive terminator. Having said that I purchased a Holo May Kte and that was end game for me. It greatly improved the sound of my Cd transport and streamer. 
I preferred the the Eversolo A8 over the Hi Rose 130. I ended up buying N20 after purchasing the N200. The N20 was endgame for me as it was the best sounding to my ears then all the others. That’s my journey. 

DAC. It will depend on the rest of your system, how well you choose your components and the rest of your system. Provided you are doing your research and investing similarly for both, maybe ~ 70% DAC.

But you really want a great DAC since it is the foundation for streaming which should be available at comparable prices and sound quality as a good transport. Moving to streaming and skipping CDs and stored files makes sense today.

@no_regrets I think your questions on the transport were essentially answered in your 2 transport threads. That said, a quality DAC requires a transport that is on par quality wise otherwise you will not get the full SQ that the DAC can deliver. And, you need to understand which of the transport’s outputs has been optimized to also get more out of it. The improvements in SQ in both respects are very apparent and "worth" it. Ultimately only you can determine by listening for yourself which DAC suits your listening tastes. There are plenty of quality DACs but they don’t all sound the same, and/or have their own tradeoffs. Net net only you can decide which avoids the issues you described

Quality DAC first. Besides, you can use DAC with 24/96 streaming rather than CD transport limited to 16/44 CDs. Sorry, haven't owned CD transport for like 15 years, everything is long ripped into lossless files.