Good CDTransport (player) without DAC?

The single best transport you can buy at ANY price is, sadly, not presently being manufactured. But if you can find one in a dealer’s inventory jump on it. It’s the PS Audio DMP player. They were sourcing their drives from OPPO which closed up shop, so until they can find another transport drive as reliable they’ve held off making more units. It will blow your mind. 

Thanks for all your great replays so far. I am not an expert, so i really appreciate your input. From the view of a dummy I actually learnt thats its really not easy to „just play a CD“ - so i have another question. 

1) Skip CDs and stream: How about focusing on a good streamer and a good dac, and just use Tidal and Qobuz digital music? I guess the masters files come from studios, so even no CD in the chain. And maybe some other songs come from CD which they have transfered to digital files, but hopefully with perfect CD reading equipment. Is this a way to get better sound or will a CD still win the race?

2) Whats the best output of a CD transport to minimize jitter? I learnt here from „itsjustme“ the complication with jitter, and that coax or optical are not great in that. How about this I2S output, as timing and sound are separated? Will the dac eg my Elac DD2 take over the control with his great clock or will there be no difference to optical?

Cheers
peter

Try Audio Research CDT-1.  No, they're not manufactured anymore, but are 'tank-tough,' built to lofty standards, look beautiful still (at least to me) and have numerous playback modes and a have decent display.  It doesn't' have a USB port though if that's important to you.  I think they're going for 600-800 USD in the used market.

Are there CD transports that have I2S outputs?

I checked with google and „CD Box RS2 T“ from Pro-Ject is a transport with I2S and should cost around 600-700 USD. But i dont know that device. My Elac DD2 just has two I2S iputs, and one of them is via HDMI, but i dont know if that brings any value..