why use a dac?

My reason is to be able to use 5disc transports and have decent sound. I have a pile of fives, and use them a lot. I have actually worn out 3 different changers after tens of thousands of hours each..
Anyway, DACs are fun. the combination of connections cables and stuff provide endless opportunities to "fool around" which is a part of this hobby.
(Some prefer the minimalist system: a source, a pre,and amp, speakers, keeping it as small and as high quality as possible). I am of the 'more is better' camp. I have many of each type of component and play around with them endlessly.

I don't think investing in a cdp is risky. Tons of people are trying to offload their cd collections, just go to your local pawn shop, where you can pay the same amount for a cd as an itunes download. If you have a good cd collection, using a dac is more of a novelty than anything. But if you are like me, and only have a few cds because i grew up in the internet generation, a dac is a neccessity for a hi-fi flac setup.

Unless your CD player is very high end, a seperate DAC will usually produce better sound. Bryston makes a very well reviewed and regarded CD player, which is, in relative terms, a very reasonably priced player. But they also have a seperate DAC you can buy, that is a juiced up version of the CD player DAC, and IMHO makes the CD player sound better. I can tell you that with computer/media server based music it is a necessity if you want good sound to use an external DAC.

My Oppo disc player sounds OK on it's own, but through the DAC that I have, it sounds great, well on that rare instance I actually play a disc.

Because they cant afford 5000-8000 ones.....

oh, that was a good one USblues! Well played!