Can best optical player rival best computer source

Yes, but the CD player cannot be a conventional design. It must essentially be a computer with CDROM disk that reads CD's at high-speed, converts them to .wav files and then spools the data out of RAM.

The design must obviously incorporate a low-jitter master clock and the implementation must be done by an expert.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Tbg I agree with you, I am not advocating buying any of the expensive players, I can't afford them either. The point was that the consensus I have picked up, is that discless digital is'nt yet up to competing with the very best disc players. It is progressing so fast, it may reach that level in the next few years

David12, I am on my third computer server. The first was a Window unit with Exact Copy and Foobar. It was a pain and so so relative to my Exemplar/Oppo BDP-83 not SE. Second I bought a Weiss Dac202 and an Apple PowerBook Pro with a SSD drive and played Amarra and then Pure Music. This was much better. Finally I got the modified Apple Mini tied with eSATA to a TuneBank raid hard drive and special software for ripping. It also has a TEAC optical drive for ripping. It is designed to work with the Weiss Dac202. This was much better and clearly better than any optical player I have heard. But I have yet to hear the Exemplar/Oppo BDP-95.

David12:

"discless" as you call it has better sound than most CD players just due to the nature of CD's moving parts, spinning disc, etc. Any decent DAC fed with hi-res files will trash most any CD player out there. I have heard DAC setups playing 24/96k and 24/192k FLAC or WAV costing under $3k hammer CD players at $10k or more.

Digital is very much caught up to and exceeded CD playback already.