Spurlash,
Thanks for that, interesting piece of kit.
The reason I use my PCs (plural) to play CD is convenience. I have a high-end hifi system in one room, which I use less and less frequently. The sound is fantastic, but the opportunities to listen are fewer and fewer, with time, family etc. taking up time and space (you know what I mean!).
I have CD /DVD players in every PC I use, with decent sound cards (upper-end Creative cards), so I use them a lot, particularly with good headphones (it's so easy to just carry the headphones around and plug into the front panel (live drive). Partly due to advancing years, perhaps, but I find the quality to be most acceptable (and I am an audiophile).
I agree with you in general about quality, but the biggest problem with PC audio is the amplification and speakers, not so much the transport and DAC, which can be reasonably good. But this relies upon bypassing the CD player's built-in DAC (or the software DAC) and using that on the sound card, and then ensuring that the sound is handled the way one wants, not the way Windows thinks it should be!
SD