transport DAC incompatibility?

what kind of sony cd-player did you buy?

some of one-box players have realy poor transport with non-sufficient level of digital output that cannot be re-locked properly.
i had the same problem using mccormack mod squad cd-player and on absolutely non-scratched cds. do not take scratches on your cd as the reason of skipping or producing an extraneous noise like in lp it's simply non-sufficient output level on your digital output. i keep my cds unscratched and untouched because i listen to them and i sell them almost right after and that's why i try to keep them new. despite this i know that scratches unless it goes deep onto the recorded surface will not affect precision of laser pickup since laser beam is an electro-magnetic waves.

there are certainly dacs far better than bel canto but in your case i would say that it's the transport problem and not dac. i believe that if you would connect your sony cd-player onto the tact rcs2 dac-preamp it would work. moreover this dac would do magic even on pocket cd-player with digital output.

Thanks for the useful information. It's a Sony CX333ES. I am not sure what you mean by "insufficient output level." Are you talking about the voltage being too low (if so, is there a way to solve this other than using different components)? WRT being scratch related, I understand that there could be other causes as well, but the problem seems to only occur on those CDs that are scratched (often occurring on the last track or two toward the outside edge of the CD).

...right-on the voltage is not enough. inside the one-box CD players the DAC chips are matched to the output whilist the digital output itself might not be appropriate. you might contact the manufacturer and state the problem. in the digital case it accepts your digital signal with different digital amplidute(bits). for example: the red-book cd has 16bits maximum amplitude. somehow either on high-level signals or let's say extremes low and high you might loose or get the digital information mis-read by the DAC.

Hi Steev - There is an excellent thread in Audiogon/forums/cables, about differences in digital cable & digital technology. You might find some answers there. Good luck!