As good as CD playback

You experience with USB will depend entirely on the design of the USB interface, either in the DAC or the USB converter. Most USB implementations are poor, so a good transport ($1K+) will usually beat it.

There are exceptions though that beat the vast majority of transports. The experience of the designer is key. If they have done multiple custom USB designs, this is usually an indicator.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Audioengr,

Good points, I don't know if I just got lucky and my wifi environment is very good or the wireless receiver and the internal USB interface on my Oppo 105 is very good, but I'm getting excellent results. I've never used a separate wireless USB receiver so I refrained from recommending a specific brand/model. I only know they exist and that he may not want to go to his rack every time he wanted to change the file played.

Convenience seems to be a driving force in audio these days, especially with younger generations. Computer audio, if nothing else, is extremely convenient. Having your entire music collection displayed on your laptop with the files stored on a wireless NAS, located in a separate room if desired, without cumbersome wires required and with playback as easy as pointing and clicking, is the equivalent of a modern day jukebox. Storing and playing back at a minimum of CD quality and up to the hi-rez format quality of your choice, is an excellent solution for a music system that has zero degradation of sound quality no matter how many times it's been played back.

I think this type of music storage and playback system goes beyond being just a modern, high quality and elegant audio system solution. I believe most good audio engineers would classify this level of audio quality combined with its extraordinary convenience, technically, as delicious.

Tim

In theory they should have the same sound. In digital, it doesn't matter that the route is longer as long as the sound is not processed in any way by any of the components in the chain (the best example would be an equalizer). My opinion is that it will sound the same. Some purist might tell you otherwise.

Petere27,

Yes, I agree. I've read that it's best to keep things in the digital domain for as long as possible and only convert from digital to analog as a final, or very close to final, step. The idea is to avoid as many conversions, both digital to analog and vice-versa, as possible to ensure data integrity.