Jump in now or wait?

I would jump in now, but I would consider the MHDT Labs Paradisea + DAC instead. Sold factory direct through Ebay only, as well as seen here used occasionaly. I replaced my 3500 Wavelength Cosecant with the Paradisea + and was thrilled with IMPROVEMENTS. The Paradisea + sells for 600. I am still amazed at how good it sounds for the price. I've had some very expensive CD players over the years and to date this is my favorite sounding digital I've heard.

I bought an IMac 24 inch w 500 GB harddrive, feeding an Apogee Duet via Firewire. The Apogee outputs to a Woo Audio 6 Modded headphone amp, then to a pair of AKG 701's.

I found the output exceptionally good- and I'm used to an Exemplar CD player, which is no slouch.

I used a PC for 15 years, and still do for business, but after experimenting with both formats, I chose MAC for music.

No matter which way you go however there are many great options and lots of fun to be had!

I jumped a few months ago. I have a pretty good digital front end in my soundroom (Esoteric X03 SE). I went with a direct PC based system (Gateway PC w/Sigma HD audio on mother board with 75 ohm coax out into Monarchy DIP, into Music Fidelity XDac3 w/XPsuV3 power supply, shunyata diamond back cables and nordost digital cable into Cayin A-50T tube intergrated (Nordost Red Dawn IC) into B & W 685 speakers (monster speaker cable for now); in the soundroom, we added a squeeze box with CI outboard power supply, nordost didigal cable, into benchmark DAC (w/o USB), Shuntata Taipan Helix VX power cable on the Benchmark and Signal Power Cable on CI power supply. The DAC goes into preamp with Tara Labs RSC Air 1 single ended IC (also experimented with Monster Sigma Retro balanced but as my Esoteric uses the only balanced inputs on my preamp, I setled with the single ended for convenience. I didn't do an extended comparison between the benchmark single ended outputs vs. the balanced, though I probably should have). The PC direct system sounds sweet and I listen while I play with the PC; It's suprisingly good actually (I use J River with an Hitachi 1 terabyte external USB2 HD, a Meridian 504 tuner, Farajouda DV1000 as sources (DV1000 used as CD player) (ripping is done with EAC/FLAC files) while I can't compare it to the dedicated sound room, for a few grand, it makes me smile while I listen. The squeezebox/benchmark system in the sound room sounds awesome. The Esoteric is better (more resolved, detailed, transparent, wider & deeper soundstage, lower noise floor, blacker back grounds, deeper base, a bit more musical, better pace, high end extension, etc)but the ability to put together a playlist of a few hours long, comprised of my favorites, kind of off sets things (kind of). The SB/Benchmark is very engaging, not fatiguing, has great low level detail and deep soundstage, though not as wide as I had hoped). There is air around the instruments, it's pretty transparent and, all in all, very enjoyable. I wouldn't give up the Esoteric but if budget was a consideration, I could understand bypassing the CD player and going with, say, a Bel Canto DAC 3 instead of the benchmark. That may very well bring things closer. SACD not withstanding (SACD blows away the flac files through the SB/Benchmark~but also blows away most (not all) redbook CD's through the Esoteric, if I didn't know what I was missing, I'd probably be thriled with the Squeezebox/DAC combo. If your stand alone CD budget is 2,000 - 3,000, I think the PC based system would surpass it (no transport noise w/squeezebox, not having to load CD's individually, etc). I don't use the PC as a CD player, just to rip, since I have the faroudja, which I think sounds pretty good. I have compared the sound of the PC CD player and the Faroudja and it wasn't close. I think the PC CD player does a fine job to rip, but it's just to noisey in a PC to use the drive as a CD player. I do have a Shunyata power cord intp PV with Monster 2000 power conditioner. I don't think upgraded power cables and using a line conditioner on computer (when using as a music server) can be easilly overlooked. The improvements were staggering. I am considering a symposium svelt shelf for under the PC in the future.

As above member Cerrot noted,I also jumped a couple months ago after wrestling around for maybe a year-18 months??Scored a Bel Canto Dac and Mac mini and extra's for 2800$ or so....very glad overall with sound quality and especially ease of song selection.One of the most satisfying jumps in 39 years of owning and lusting over equipment.I understand the view of Cd player owners also.That being said it was a no-brainer after the jump was executed[sp]."Charge em", as we say on Oahu,cheers,Bob

Steve, I see what you are saying. Once it's pushed down the pipe no telling what can happen to it.

Tiger, while it would be nice to believe that Blu-Ray audio would be embraced, history tells us otherwise. SACD and DVD-A are effectively dead.. The average music buyer doesn't care about those so why would they convert to Blu-Ray? Pay per bit may dampen some internet services but I think that it will ultimately win the war and little plastic discs will go away.