In a nutshell a good sounding transport is sort of like a hit or miss situation. Based on my experience, there is no easy way to look at specs or internal construction and decipher if the transport will sound good or not. A good example of this is my Aiwa 37 cd player that will sonically crush any "high end transport" under $1500. This is a mass marketed $125 cd player with optical out. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to why the Aiwa sounds so damn good, yet it does! Another contrarian example is a 6 year old $5000 "high end" teac transport that many high end salons were selling as "one of the best". That thing sucks wind! In the end I'd use forums like audiogon and audio asylum to find out which transport is the best sounding in your price range.
