AIR vs CD player

[burgundy]

what's your thought on this scenario:

Macbook playing CD via itune and feeding into devialet using AIR 

vs 

reference grade CD player via RCA line


Which sounds better? Has anyone tried?

MB (playing ripped CD) iTunes - - > AIR - - > Devialet 

The 16-bit/44.1 CD ripped being decoded by Devialet would sound very good 

BUT 

if you have a Reference grade CDP with excellent D/A within the CDP .. and connected to Devialet with analog Line RCAs, this too will be very good ...  

Its now a question of whether the MB/Air/Devialet can connect you emotionally vs. the Ref CDP 

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I tried this and have leaned for the Ref grade CDP connected to the Devialet via s/PDIF RCA &/or AES/EBU XLR .. And when connected to the Devialet via AES/EBU XLR, I found the results stunning !!

So its your call ... 

if you connect your CDP to the devialet via s/pdif or aes/ebu, isn't it now that the devialet doing the D/A conversion?  then the CDP is just a transport and the internal DAC doesn't matter.