There seems to be a lot of importance on jitter, re-clocking, etc while this is important, it will take a very revealing high end system to actually make out such a significant difference. The biggest difference between two DACs is philosophy and execution, this is what will determine the sonic signature. The transports - PC or DVD, etc will not matter so much. From reading this, it seems that the DACmagic and the CA640/740 have the same DAC chips, pls - this no way says whether one is better sounding than the other. What matters is how its executed assuming the sonic philosophy is the same - what components are used, the quality, etc. Whoever is interested in buying should listen to it make sure there is synergy with other components in the chain and then make a decision. Generally design philosophies being the same (same chip, same company, etc) a DAC may have a "better" (or more closer to their goal) sounding unit than a CDP, why? simply because they may not make the same compromises that they do on a CDP whether its PSU related or layout/shielding, component quality, etc after all they are working keeping a budget in mind.
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Sorry, Sridhar, I somehow missed your post. Two things I have understood from your post, and one I have not.
The two things I understood are (i) the philosophy and the execution part that you talked about and (ii) DAC being better than the comparably priced CDP. I think I agree with you on both those issues.
Now the one I have not understood: You seem to have suggested that unless one has a very high end and quite a revealing system, the differences between different transports (such as the one between my Sony DVDP and my CA 740c) should not be detectable.
Actually I would tend to agree with you even here, but in practice when I experimented with both the transports (the 740c being used as the DAC), I found the sound from the 740c (being used as the CDP) slightly better, as I have already described above in my earlier post.
Everybody seems to have a different explanation for it. Venkat (please see his post above) thinks it is the Sony DVDP transport that could not read all the frequencies from the CD. Gopi (see his post also) thinks it may be the jitter introduced by the poorer transport on the Sony. Now you think there should not be much of a difference between the two unless the rest of the system is really high class.
Well the rest of my system is not, by a long way, a high end system. The amp is a budget amp (NAD 325bee), however my 19 year old Canton Karat 60 speakers (while not high end) are reasonable. Bought for 2000 DM in Germany in 1989, I have not heard anything close to them within a lakh here in India (have not heard BE-718, but they are above a lakh, aren't they). (In a separate thread I may start a discussion on these speakers with whatever technical specification I have about them and l would invite suggestions about a better amp).
Based on your post and the high end revealing systems, I should not hear the difference between the two transports then. But I do.
I know I am asking a difficult question, because none of you are actually not hearing the difference I am talking about. But since all reviewers of CDPs and DACs these days, even for budget systems, are talking about jitter and manufacturers are also claiming all sorts of procedures to get rid of them, may be we should think about these things more and try to make some kind of objective judgment on these things more than just hearsay.
). Now that I have a CDP, I am open to experimentation and don't mind spending more on a DAC with USB just to find out how it goes - esp since I find changing CDs every 7/8 songs painfully boring (more so because only 3 songs out of 7 on average I find listen-able on a commercial CD). Its different with handling Vinyl records, charming feel and experience, but not with CDs. I think (like someone pointed out) the difference won't be audible on my budget cd6002>Nad c325BEE > Wharfedale 9.2 system. 
