DAC or new player ?

Tobias - Nice setup. Do you have a view on the Apogee mini dac versus the Benchmark? I'm thinking of going with the USB version of one of these.

Dokosan, thank you for the kind word. I didn't audition the Benchmark before choosing the Apogee because I was replacing an older and much-enjoyed Apogee model, the DA-1000E-20. As you very likely know, there are reviews on the Net but I've found only one head-to-head listening comparison of Mini-DAC and Benchmark and it's in a link on the Apogee site. So many people would like to have another one available that for purely altruistic reasons ;) I am tempted to do it myself.

DAC with computer as a transport. The Paradisea from MHDT Labs sells for under $500, nice tube buffer DAC. I'll probably never buy another CD player.

Tobias is right. We are at the beginning of a new era of digital music and it is nonsense to buy a dedicated cd-player. Get one good dac (actually, such like an apogee mini dac, or even at half price of that a TC konnekt 8 or Edirol UA 101) allows you to have a very well balanced dac, adc (dont forget: these are studio gears and not voiced to be a coloured niche products for serving one particular taste packed into a nice box to please your eye. A TEAC VRDS and old Sony ES player as transport would nicely complement such a gear.

Ahaju, I am sure I must be right--thank you--but I did not say it was nonsense to buy a dedicated CD player. I have not compared my setup with an equivalently-priced CD player of recent design (I would be interested in the latest TOTL Shanling, for example). Nor have I subbed my computer into my system to compare it with my transport. So I can't say which setup produces the best sound, and I would need to know that in order to make my choice.

What I did say was that you don't need to spend multiple thousands to get a very satisfying DAC these days, especially if you tweak it nicely. OTOH if you have the bucks you can do better sound-wise. You have a very nice DAC and I would love to compare your source with my own.