How important is the transport when using a DAC?

The answer to your question is yes, you should have a transport that is well matched to your DAC because the system sound will take on the character of the transport. One of the better transports available at a reasonable price is the California Audio Labs Delta transport. I know of one currently for sale. If you check around you will find it.

Is anyone familiar with the Arcam rdac? It looks pretty basic with coax, toslink and usb inputs. Outputs are by way of a single pair of RCAs. It is advertised by Crutchfield as being an improvement over your sound card and it sells for $479 delivered. The Sony DVD player currently being used as a transport is murky sounding at best. Unfortunately Arcam does not make a transport. They decided to make ipod docks instead. It is interesting reading all of the technical information, but does anybody have a recommendation for a transport to be used with the Arcam rdac?

In my opinion the analogue stage is more important. I owned two Tandberg CD players. These were top of the line CD players selling in the neighborhood of $2,000 in the late 1980s. These CD players were identical in every way except one player was 14 bit and the other player was 16 bit. I compared these two CD players over and over again. However, I was unable to distinguish a difference between the two CD players.

Audioengr, In 1990 there was no such thing as a 15K preamp. For what it's worth, the same chip set used in that Tandberg CD player back then is highly desirable today for it's musicality. I think Philips was on to something when they were developing the CD. After all, in the mid 1980s, when CDs were being introduced, they had to compete with Vinyl and Reel to Reel tapes. Since those early days the sound of CD players have changed and not necessarily for the better, only different. Also, Your comment regarding any preamp costing less than 15K is considered inexpensive is ludicrous and I am totally against commercial users pushing their products on these threads.

Audioengr, What is an Empirical Audio DAC/Pre?