NOS DAC or CDP?

Cleaneduphippy - NOS DAC is sensitive to jitter and will sound better with good transport. I would avoid using optical unless you need to break ground loops.

I use upsampling-jitter rejecting DAC (Benchmark DAC1)with the cheapest transport I could find ($70 DVD player) and I like the sound a lot (plus DVD players have great tracking).

Clio09 - in April 2009 issue of Stereophile (also on their website) they review Meridian 808.2 CD player. It is upsampling player with different algorithm digital filter. They claim it is the best player they've heard ever (and better be for $16k). That would suggest some deficiencies in traditional digital filtering.

Cleaneduphippy - Jitter is a noise in time domain. You can either get good dedicated transport (expensive) and good digital cable or jitter supressing DAC. How to determine if transport is jittery? Just check specifications or opinion on audio forums. Optical cable is probably the worst choice since signal edges are slow and jitter is most likely worst than coax.

I'm not sure what you call "analytical". Benchmark is very clean and transparent (not designed for warmish sound). It had also great reviews. Avoid used ones.

Cleaneduphippy - I suspect that you like warm sound that I don't care for. Listen to few DACs of different types and decide yourself. My experience is limited and it is personal thing (matter of taste).

I never had high quality transport but good one shows amount of jitter in picoseconds. Statements like "virtually eliminates" should raise warning flag.

Also price should suggest quality - good, low jitter transports are often over $5k.

Cleaneduphippy - no need to be rude. Nobody will be able to pick system for you and there is nothing "warm" about NOS DACs. I was merely suggesting that jitter rejecting DAC might give you more for the money plus great flexibility by being able to connect server/computer in future. Within given parameters, as you call your description, I stated that NOS player might be not very good match to your CDP especially using optical. It sounds to me that your mind was already set before you asked the question. Sorry that I couldn't be more helpful.

Jtwrace - I heard Valab recently at Mattzack2 place with very good tube gear and Dali speakers. It is really nice. I'm planning to insert my Benchmark into exactly same setup to compare. The main idea behind Valab is not the NOS itself but increasing resolution of traditional DACs by putting eight of them in parallel (averaging resistor ladder). I have even seen one implementation (DIY) where dacs where simply soldered one on the top of the other. TDA1453 used in Valab is decent (obsolute since 2000) DAC. Sigma-Delta converters have similar resolution limits (16-18 bits) because of timing inaccuracies. DCS Ring DACs (FMJ-23, Elgar) rotate 5 identical resistors in ladder positions to average tolerance and get more of the resolution. Any method is good, I guess, if it sounds better.

Cleaneduphippy - I'm sorry for sounding condescending. It is fuzzy issue with transport being adequate or not since it is difficult to spend over $5k for the transport or even get the loaner to listen at home. In addition differences might become more obvious only when other system elements improve in future.

Optical has much (about twice) higher jitter than coaxial and since you don't have coaxial output I thought it might be better to get jitter rejecting DAC.

Clio09 suggestion to buy Monarchy DIP is excellent one. It will solve your problem of optical only output since suppression on optical of Monarchy DIP is much higher than on coaxial and ends up with even lower jitter. Read this: http://www.monarchyaudio.com/DIP4.htm

Muralman1 - jitter produces sidebands at very low levels, (around -80dB with average transport) that are still quite audible since not related to root frequency. In music it is just noise in the background. Jitter is formed in D/A conversion and filtering has nothing to do with it. It is possible that you have good transport to start with. It would be very interesting to try this Monarchy DIP on high resolution system like yours. On my system switch from good CDP to Benchmark gave me incredible clarity and transparency. It also revealed deficiencies of my system like harsh sounding tweeters or thin sounding speaker cable.