Great to hear. I agree with upgrading your CD player. I moved from a Sony 300 carousel to a Rotel that’s in the same lineup as my amp and preamp. It definitely made a difference including using the XLR connection from the player to the preamp. Sounded better right from the opening of Baba O’Riley. I now burn my CDs into my Innuos MK3 streamer so I use the USB connection. It sounds as good as the CD player.
My SACD Transport feeds so much better signal to my DAC compared with streaming end...
I mostly use Roon to stream my 2000+ album digital collection with Bluesound Node + Ideon 3R Master Time reclocker + Ideon Ayazi MKII DAC. Recently I got a used PS Audio PerfectWave SACD Transport to rediscover my CD collection from years ago that my parents brought back to me from their home, which I have not touched for a very long time. I thought the 3R reclocker would clean up much of the signal from the Bluesound to the extent that streaming will not sound much worse than CD -- Indeed, I have been satisfied with its performance. I was wrong. The CD playback experience totally blew me away. Much darker background, much better soundstage and depth, lots of details, and better dynamics with great authority... I guess you really need a good streamer to catch disc playback! At any rate, I plan to upgrade my front end to one that works with the SACD Transport's I2S output so that I can enjoy my SACDs as well...