I know that when I rip cds I will be limited to the cd's origional sound quality. But I have seen some web sites offering high bit lossless downloads that are said to deliver better than cd sound quality. I know that most cd's are compressed and loose a lot of music information with it. I know a lot of people go to using pc's for music for the easy click and play music playback but I would like to get the most of this kind of setup and I am into the best sound quality possible within my budget. I know that there is nothing seriously bad with cd playback, mostly jitter and loss of warmth in compared to analog but I do listen to cd now on a good player and I just want to make sure that if I take the time and money to make a pc a music source I will not be disapointed in comparison to a CDP