You'll never get a consensus in regard to which setup sounds best, so the basic decision you have to make is how you want to listen to music. If you like the perceived convenience of a hard drive based system, then there are computer/DAC options that can sound very good and arguably equal to comparably priced CDP's. Otherwise, a good CDP is the simplest and most direct method to top quality sound. I use a bit of a hybrid approach. I have 20-30 "desert island" discs on my hard drive. For everything else I rely on the CDP.
