Are you still playing CDs after, comp based syst?

If my listening sessions were short, I probably would have bought a very nice CDP. But I work from home sometimes, and that happens in my listening room, and it gets really old constantly getting up and swapping discs throughout the day.. Not to mention the stacks and stacks of plastic cases that I have to re-alphabetize. Even my night work sessions are at least 2 hours long; I'm not a single-disc guy...plus a PC rig can be incrementally updated, a nice CDP cannot.
When I compare the final price of my PC rig to the cost of a nice CDP, used or new, the convenience factor plays a huge role in that decision. I get great sound from my PC rig, but there are too many variables in the all the other systems I've heard to decide the CDP vs PC debate. I'd have to A/B my friend's MF NuVista vs my PC rig. Now that would be something.
Also, Empirical's Mac-based rigs at RMAF 2010 and 2011 were not cold-sounding. But they weren't anywhere near my budget either!

What your DAC or CDP can produce depends on the quality of your cdp and the DAC therein.

On the weekend we test-drove a $900 DAC, and also a $4000 DAC at the dealer steamed from a MAC computer in Apple Lossless format: neither matched the performance from the same tunes played as the redbook CDP (about $12K) w.r.t. sounstage width and depth, vocal presence and instrument clarity, digging out much more the subtle details in the recording, and mainly the PRaT and overall emotion.

In this audition, the digital music server playback was comparatively compressed with a perceived dip in the midrange and upper midrange upper midrange

The point: what are are you prepared to give and compromise between the different formats?

Akg - The compressed formats are not as good as .wav for sure, however AIFF comes pretty close to .wav on a Mac, and retains all of the tags and album art.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

We are just now discovering all of these warts with Computer Audio? Now that we have been trying to kill off
the CD Market with "Soon all New Music will only be
available as Music Downloads"! I have been desperately
promoting the use of both Formats so long as Computer
Audio remains an unfinished Format- it is indeed that!
Now we are caught between the loss of one Format, and
the premature underdevelopment of its replacement Format.
Nice job cutting off your nose to spite your face for the sake of convenience (At the cost of everything else!).

No need to gloat.

There is no vindication here, just another aspect to be considered.

All things in good time.

All the best,
Nonoise