Ruminations On CD Players

@jrcotner - My two cents - One advantage to having a separate DAC and CD transport is the flexibility and potentially lower cost of a future change should you find replacing one or the other improves SQ further, or presents a different sound more to your liking.. That said, you will find differing views within threads on the importance of the  transport. I am in the camp that you don't want to short change with the transport , it definitely impacts the overall SQ realized. I state this via 1st hand experience having moved on from a Cambridge CXC transport (pretty decent) to a SimAudio 260DT transport ; both used in conjunction with a Modwright Elysee DAC.  With the budget that you want to stay in I'd recommend going for a traditional CD player versus separates;  depending upon your viewpoint on cables you might also have to allocate some of that budget to an upgraded power cord and digital cable. Staying with the CD player you would hopefully maximize your budget from an SQ standpoint. 

Best of luck with whatever decision you make. And, no need to be swayed from staying with CDs by the streamer crowd. Enjoy spinning! I do in 2 systems

John, just food for thought for the present or future if you do go down the separates route. Transports are not all the same SQ wise and will either hold back or release the potential of the DAC. Benjamin Zwickel, Mojo Audio DACs, clued me into this when I was purchasing one of his ,and he was correct. I went from Cambridge CXC to Simaudio DT 260 and the SQ materially improved. Check out the threads on the top Project transport or the Jay’s transports and you will find similar experiences. Also, when you go beyond the likes of the Cambridge or Audio Lab transports one of the digital output connections might be optimized for SQ so you may want to have a DAC that accepts that connection. I initially used the SPDIF on the Simaudio and it sounded very good. However, out of curiosity I asked Simaudio if one of the connections was optimized for SQ and was told the AES/EBU was. The result was a further uptick in SQ. I believe the top of the line Project is optimized likewise, though folks using the SPDIF connection appear to be very pleased with its SQ. I don’t know if either of the Jay’s transports have an optimized output. Again, just some things to possibly consider.

@mahler123  "These technologies are not mutually exclusive. One can happily play their physical media and also listen to streaming. Or not. I don’t think that we have to badger people to do it one way or the highway"

+1

@tvrgeek "I am not aware of any CD player for any price with a DAC that can beat some I know of for $100, let alone a RME, CORD, Denifritz etc"

Hyperbole! What high end CD players have you listened to please detail?  Any of these for example amongst them Vitus, Esoteric, Metronome, CH Precision, Neodio, Goldmund, etc?

@tvrgeek  Your perspective on things fits right in with ASR. Whatever works for you have at.

"Several in the high end stores. Did not pay attention to the brand but hooked up to very high end systems. One was a Moon, Another a Mac"

I'll go out on a limb and say that the front end digital equipment was Sim and McIntosh since they make their own