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I thought about grabbing a cheap CD transport and plugging into my DAC via coax or optical, but it seems the words "cheap" and "CD transport" don't go together. Everything costs high 3-figures and into 4 figures.
Why? It's a CD player minus the DAC section. A cheap DVD player with coaxial-out costs fifty bucks or less. A bare DVD-RW drive for a computer costs 25 bucks. How does a CD transport cost a thousand? What am I missing?
There is a misconception (or 2) in your question. A cd-player is not just an optical drive. And a cd-transport for audio is different from a DVD-RW drive because the demands are very different.
1 A simple USB DVD-RW needs a computer driver telling it what to do.
2 A DVD-RW is expected to write at 8x DVD speed (or 52x cd) and with the flimsy build it will make a lot of noise. So will a dvd-player (because the optical drive is basically a DVD rom optical drive)
3 a DVD-RW doesn't do gapless play. This is really annoying when a continuous mix or concept album gets interrupted by 2s pauses.
A dedicated CD player has a sturdy case that reduces vibration.
A drive that plays only single speed without making noise, with a lot sturdier engineering.
A proper power supply that doesn't pollute the signal.
An interface for driving the transport, maybe even with a remote, that plays gapless as a standard.
A chip to convert iis to sp/dif (coax or toslink), or to the internal dac and output stage if it's not just a transport.
A good CD player that is built to last avoids crappy tray or slot loading mechanisms that are prone to breaking down or damaging the cd if it gets stuck.
Those are some reasons why you can't make a silent gapless cd drive for audio for beer money.
And if you had done your research on this forum you would have known that. There's even a dedicated thread to 'cheap cd-players'!
There are no longer cd-players being mass produced like usb drives are. But there is a renewed interest in properly engineered cd-drives and transports since the good old Philips or Teac drives have been out of production for a long time. Pro-ject made a new one from scratch (expensive!) Shanling has a name in cd-players. But they cost from 300-700 for the cheaper models. (300-400 models are just 'ok', my shanling didn't sound as great over sp/dif as other sources).
And just in is the SMSL cd-player PL200. It isn't in your price range but it has an incredible build quality, ticks all the boxes, a newly developed drive just for cd's and a really top notch AKM4499ex dac that rivals their own $1000 dac. You can even used it as a dac via the USB-c input.
FYI I have a Rose streamer now that can rip cd's from a $20 drive so even as I'm tempted by this SMSL, I really have no use for it.
If you have a computer (I don't anymore) I suggest ripping all your cd's and feed that to your dac. Or find a quiet solution like the Rose or Eversolo streamer where you can store all your files on an SSD.