Opting for no CDP -- only to regret it?

If you use dBpoweramp it will decode the HDCD to 20 bits, which gives you much of the advantage of HDCDs. You do not get the HDCD filters, but the bit expansion helps a lot.

I still have my Classe player, but it is now in my bedroom system and I have not had any reason to move it back.

"Respectfully: Which is more fuss...burning a new one to your library...or constantly searching through hundreds of cds for a specific cd or a song when the mood strikes you?"
That's a false choice. Here's an example of what I was talking about: Got two CDs in the mail yesterday. If I had a CD player, I could have popped one in and started listening a couple of seconds after I'd shut the mailbox door. As things stand now, here's what I'd have to have done: Go upstairs, which is where my music server happens to live, rip one or both (which would take, say, five to 10 minutes), then tell the Logitech Media Server to look for new and changed music (which would be pretty quick, but I'm including it as another step, since it's there and all), come back downstairs, plop down in my listening chair, launch iPeng on my iPhone, and start listening. In all, we're looking at probably 12 to 15 minutes (and one trip up and another down the stairs) just to hear some music that arrived in the mail. Versus, say, 15 seconds if I still had a CDP.
Now, I use the Squeezebox all the time, and don't intend to stop. Once the new discs are on the server, I'll likely never put either into the CDP again -- unless one or both happens to have been encoded using the HDCD process).
My post wasn't offering the type of either/or choice you suggest. I was only saying that there are times when it would still be nice and easy to have a CD player. Not many times, and not as a replacement for the music server, but times. And yesterday happened to be one of 'em.
Respectfully,
Howard

i agree that being tethered to the computer and having to rip everything is something of a hassle at times. with the ascendance of computer audio and bluray, you can now get very serviceable older universal disc players--say a denon or integra--for a hundo or less, which gives you the flexibility to play the odd sacd or sample a disc you got at the library.

Touch a new CD only once. Ripping a CD takes 3 minutes. I went the same route, only regret is why didn't I do this sooner.

I picked up a new Tascam CD-200 because of the excellent transport within. A mere $250 from Amazon. Digital coax out to my external DAC.
I will never eliminate a CDP (transport) from my system; I will always listen to CDs this way, even though most of our collection is ripped and in a hard drive, accessible through the Squeezebox Touch.