So much to say here. I’ll avoid the direct comparison because that is very brand dependent and no one has heard most stuff. but the question"what makes one better" is, to me easier to answer. A CD player, end-to-end has many components, and many of those are analog or have analog components - including those before the DAC!
My broadest comment is to migrate from CDs to files, and play them out over USB. For me, using ALAC/FLAC, either ROON or Bitperfect streams sound substantially better than the original CD - played through the same DAC and equipment. In my experience, the best sound and lowest noise requires running my streaming hardware (and OLD macbook pro) from its battery, not plugged in, sigh. Why better? Likely jitter. A CD transport following the standards probably puts out SPDIF, and a cheap transport - or even a good one - will have some timing degradation.
Note as i have blogged about, SPDIF makes the source (e.g.: that cheap-o CD player) the clock. Your $10k DAC takes jitter form the source. USB turns this around and simply sends bits to a buffer, where they are re-clocked by the DAC, or can and should be.
Once you have the bits in the DAC portion of the chain one must re-clock very precisely and eliminate noise, both of which contribute to jitter. Jitter, changes the X-crossing point of the reconstructed musical wave and therefore is a plain, old analog distortion. no audiophile magic necessary here. next come all sorts of noise and power supply related opportunities for distortion and of course, the reconstruction filter and analog preamp that is the end of a DAC’s internal functional chain. So if you think capacitors, preamps etc make a difference guess what, you have several of each in there. They must be good.
Bottom line, there are lots of places a transport and DAC can mess up sound. The chip architecture, which most focus on, is probably the least.
Now, just to contradict myself, i have four DACs and have had the chance to borrow several more in my very revealing system. From a Schiit Mido3 (the best $99 DAC i can imagine) to a Theta DSPro/G2 to a ridiculously re-worked MSB (all rework my own designs) these do NOT sound the same - so the comparison of the cheapo to the Theta simply proved that someone can’t hear or has a mediocre system. Ar these differences night and day, awful vs glorious? No! That’s a huge issue in this field/hobby, crazy exaggerations. But the differences are real and manifest themselves even more over long periods of time. My gold test is always "can I go back without missing component X?"
BTW i heard the effect of a $40 amazon sourced Toslink-to-coax SPDIF adapter. You just cannot imagine ho distorted it was. and I have pics of the resulting, ugly wave when i used it in a test jig with test tones (files) and a ’scope. UGLY! Clearly visible jitter to the naked eye! Step function jaggies in the sine wave! Ugly!
Hop this helps
G
