Is a transport/DAC combo better than a CD player

The answer to your question is: not necessarily.

The main drawback--and reason why transport/dac combos fell out of favor for a few years--is that reflection back of the digital signal through the digital interconnect between the transport and the DAC introduces additional jitter into the system which would not be present in a one-box solution.

This problem has largely been eliminated in modern DACs, which use either low-jitter input receivers (like Musical Fidelity X-DACv3 and Channel Islands Audio VDA-1) or digital buffers (the Benchmark DAC).

The Musical Fidelity Tri-Vista should be relatively immune from jitter introduced through the interconnect. So, if your transport has sufficiently low jitter (anything under 200 ps peak jitter is GREAT), you will get excellent sound, and a one box player will have no real benefit at least as far as sound quality is concerned.

A DAC is really useful if you want to have a one-box solution for DVD and CD. Buy a cheapo DVD player with respectable jitter specs and a dedicated CD laser (such as the Phillips SACD players), couple it with your Tri-Vista, and you will have a world-class red book front end.

I think the combo is better if done properly. I use a Sony 777ES and run the CD through a Birdland AUdio DAC with reclocking board and I swear the red book sounds every bit as good as the two channel SACD (have A/b'd JAcintha and Patricia BArber redbook vs SACD). You do need to be careful of the digital cable to the DAC--the investment in the cable is well worth the money.

It depends of the units used...

Personnally I used a Hegel CDP2A itself and the sound is very nice. Great improvement over a Cairn FOG2 (24/192)

Now the CDP2A combined with a external dac HD10, the step is very very nice in all the way (soundstage, deep bass, fine details more perceptible, etc)

And with another quality power cable and digital cable to the dac, I got another step.

I am trying to test with another unit than the Hegel CDP2A, low costly cd player to see if it justify the cost of using the CDP2A cd player instead of a 1000-1500 range unit.

All depend of the units matching and cables used in my humble opinion.

it seems that this is a rhetorical question .

of course , it is possible that either separates will be preferred to a one box player or some one box player will be preferred to separates. there are many variables, taste being one of them.

my favorite digital source of all time is the naim cd x of 1994.