How does CD5XS rate as transport to DAC?

I also have a CD5XS with Flatcap XS2 and recent conversations with a local dealer were causing me to review the streaming option.  So I was looking at the spec of the ND5XS and noticed it has digital inputs.  Then thinking about its integration with the rest of my kit, and this topic, I wondered that if you want to stay with CD for some music could you use the ND5 as an off board DAC?  

It might not be as good as the DAC but could it offer an improvement over that in the CD5XS, and might optimise expenditure as well as still giving the XPS upgrade path option.  Then if CD replay was eventually ditched in full favour of streaming you would just remove that element.

Has anyone tried that option?

One has to consider the CD5X/XS ia a US$3K CD player, with a DAC on-board that is probably fairly well optimised.  Other DACs, excellent though they may be, have to play well with a variety of comers.  I am inclined to give the on-board DAC, at this level, benefit of the doubt.  I love my own CD5X, and do not wonder at all if it might sound better through a different DAC, which it does not support anyway.

Nick

The CD5 XS onboard DAC section indeed is already very very good. I would be very careful in considering any other DAC than nDAC on this already quite accomplished CDP. I remember listening tests at a dealership who did not have the nDAC available in the shop at the time. I had to ask him to remove alternate DACs he had connected to conduct tests with to come back to plain vanilla CD5 XS and recover PRaT, cohesion and density of timbres. 

Chag -