A CD is a spinner and a laser so what does a 12k Esoteric do that a $1,200 Marantz doesn't
There's more to making music than making the little silver disc spin around and pointing a laser at it. The quality of the transport matters, and most importantly, what happens to the bits and bytes after they are read by the laser matters the most. The digital bits need to be converted to an analog signal, which is what separates the wheat from the chaff.