Pioneer Elite Transport or Rotel?

Yeah, why not just A/B both side by side and post your results! I would be very interested in your appraisal and will perform a similar shootout soon with the same dac. FWIW, MF claims any cheap transport will work with that dac very nearly as well as any big buck one will, and Atkinsons' test data would seem to confirm that, but we don't listen to test equiptment....

Also, don't count Pioneer out based on the name, the stupidly expensive cd players and transports abound aren't made from scratch, many source from Pioneer for a large bulk of the players internals. Even for those well over $10K players reviewers rave about you'll see much on the inside with a Pioneer or Sony sticker on it....