[McPanse]

First, a disclaimer: champagne tastes on a beer (well, microbrew) budget and all that...

I've been building a small footprint secondary system from budget-class, off-the-beaten path components like the Trends and Little Dot amps and am now contemplating my next upgrades.

The weak links on my set up include my Pioneer universal DVD player and my Citypulse 7.2 DAC. The 7.2's fatal flaw is that it won't take a toslink signal from the Airport Express. Oh, and switching back and forth between aux and coax with the 7.2's remote, I'm don't hear two nickels worth of difference between the 7.2 DAC and the Pioneer's DAC.

But I digress.

The Citypulse is still returnable for a full refund. And I want to optimize this system for headphone playback versus loud speaker playback.

My options, as I see them:

Budget DAC (Zero, Zhaolu, etc.) plus Airport Express (AE) + $300 to $500 CD player (Marantz CF5001/3, Cambridge 340 or 540, some of the tube jobs on Pacific Valve, etc.)

More expensive DAC for AE ($400 to $700) + cheaper CD player used as transport only (Oppo or refurb Marantz 5001, for example ($200))

Cambridge 740 CDP doubling as DAC for Airport Express ($950).

Which upgrade path would you pursue and why? Which DACS/CDPs have good synergy with the Little Dot?

 

[McPanse]

bump

 

[McPanse]

second bump (throw me a bone here, folks).

 

[dgbiker1]

I would (... I do!) use my macbook to store lossless rips of CDs, and stream them to my Opus through an airport express. That takes the CDP out of the equation and lets you spend money on a good DAC instead of spreading it out and compromising.
For your total budget of ~$1000, get a benchmark dac1, twisted pear buffalo or opus, or something in that area. Basically, I wouldn't spend any money on a CDP and put it all into a DAC.