John......Besides the CDP/Dac setup you owned, could you give us all an example of one you thought sounded better than the rest ? One you have heard. I do remember you saying you enjoyed the setup at Brian's (VMPS shootout). Thanks..... 
WolfyChris,
Let's start this response by again stating the
unequivocal advantages of CD over vinyl:
1. Convenience (disc handling, disc storage, remote control, etc)
2. Dynamics (16 bits = 96db. The best vinyl can muster is 40-50db I understand)
3. Noise (no explanation needed here I think)
4. User Features (ease of placement, remote volume, wider applicability with preamp sections...no RIAA equalization needed; only line inputs, etc)
There are of course some other issues like stereo separation, phase, bandwidth and the like....but they are most secondary to the above differences for most of us average/non-technical a'philes
#1 and #3 are essentially
the same for all players; #2 and #4 differ somewhat based on players selected.
Of those, Big B's rig was the
most dynamic I can remember hearing (played on awesome RM40's, this feature was easy to identify). It also had remote volume so you could remove the colorations of a preamp and go directly to your amp. That, for me, was
less of a benefit as I've found adding tubes until you can
bear CD sound is essential
Frankly, very few times in my life have I stopped dead in my tracks, listen for any length of time and admired sounds eminating from a CD player. There have been dynamics-a-plenty I've heard, but few if any that have
conveyed musical subtleties as vinyl rather routinely does.
A CEC belt drive player in the Hyperion room at CES one year was nice; but, so too, were the very wonderful Hyperion speakers and Class A monoblocks they were using. So, I'm not sure what I was taken with there
One that impressed me enough to fork over $2K in mods was Steve Nugent's Empirical Audio room at CES 2004 and 2005. I think I was there for almost an hour each time and was able to stand listening (a BIG deal, for me). What part of that experience was born out of Steve's mastery and upgrades to his KEF speakers, his Mark Levinson pre-amp, Parasound JC-1 mono's or digital front end (in 2004 he had the Sony 7700 feeding a Perp Tech; in 2005 he had a dedicated laptop/server feeding the same Perp Tech)
Both years experience was a thrill ride....I found no difference between laptop server and Sony transport, personally.....but that type of equipment is very much wasted in the listening space we typically all have to work with.
Conveying music is the goal in real world spaces.....and vinyl does so far more convincingly than CD does - or, likely, ever will.
NOTE: I think DVD-A is a nice advance on digital sound; it improves on most of negative aspects of CD's, and encroaches a large part of the musicality that is the domain of vinyl
nearly exclusively, right now
