What CD player/transport has the most stable mechanism?

Esoteric

I'm with rockanroller on this one.  The old Sony ES are hard to beat.  I'm using an X779 es for years and years. 

That you all for that information.  I'll look into it.  The only reason my original query did not include isolation materials was because I figure that a well-built player on an isolation platform would always outperform a jumpy player on the same platform.  But maybe I'm wrong about that, what with the possibility of mismatched resonant frequencies and such.

Just one more follow up question.  I noticed that the Esoteric line advertises a VRDS-NEO transport mechanism down to the K-05 player.  The K-07 player does not include it.  Should I not look at the K-07?  It's more in my wheelhouse price-wise, but this will probably be the last player I ever buy.  I don't want to be disappointed.  Thanks in advance.  I'll look into picking up an old SONY.

@hgonzal Bear in mind that other manufacturers such as DCS use Teac VRDS drives as well. For example there’s a Paganini just listed today that has the Teac VMK-5 drive. Teac have stopped selling drives to third parties unfortunately so there will be less of these in the future

also think about the DAC you are using this with as all these manufacturers have their own proprietary interfaces that will be superior to plan vanilla connections

Finally additional isolation will help no matter how good the drive.. many DCS and Esoteric users use Herzan platforms under their transports for example

Yeah, I noticed that part about proprietary interfaces.  I understand why they do that, but that's not going to work for me.  BTW, thank you for pointing out belt-drive systems.  I didn't know such a thing existed.  That is exactly why I started this thread, to find out about stuff like that.

I used to be really into this stuff, I remember when Stereophile was just a pamphlet, but I lost interest some time ago.  I listen to music every day, but I'm just not that interested in the gear anymore, at least not enough to keep track of the latest new thing.  It's funny, I think a lot of time people are more into the gear than the music, which is fine of course.  I've always had an interest in astronomy, but mostly it's because I love messing around with mirrors and the other optical components.  It's strangely addictive.