Go with a Pioneer DVD player. I heard a cheap Pioneer 333 at the CES show run into a Perpetual Technologies P1A (upsampler-dsp based interpolation unit) run this way and it was great. By the way the DSP bases interpolation the the rerason units like the DCS and Perpetual Technologies sound so good. It is not the upsampling. Upsampling is very similar to oversampling in its effect and is probably only 10-20 % of the total difference that these units make on the sound quality. DCS, Meridian and Perpetual Technologies use their own DSP based computer code to take 16 bit words and output 24 bit words. This is the reason they sound so good. NOT the 44.1k to 96k upsampling.
Upsampling/Advice on Transport
After reading Sam Tellig's piece in the Feb. stereophile, I've decided that I want to take the plunge into upsampling via the MSB Link DAC. Unfortunately, my current CD player (Sonic Frontiers SFCD-1) doesn't have digital outputs, and so I will need to get a transport. His article implies that the quality of the transport is virtually irrelevant (he even used a Radio Shack portable and got the same results), because part of his suggested system is a Monarchy Audio Digital Interface Processor, which acts as a jitter reducer. So here is my question: in order to get the best sound, do I need to spring for an expensive transport, or will any consumer-grade CD player with digital outputs do the trick. Opinions?