Phoenix469,
I am never one to argue with steve he is very knowledgeable.
I run my PC to my main rig as follows. Computer, Ethernet cable to a Roku, SPDIF out to a Musical Fidelity TriVista tube DAC. In this setup I use Itunes as the player. On my vista machine I can hear the difference between my transport, a WAV file and an apple lossless file. There are distinct differences between the three and IMHO the transport is the best. Now when I had an XP machine I could not tell the difference between between my transport and a WAV file. Keep in mind that Itunes was the player on both machines.
For my setup in the office I use a USB DAC. Musical Fidelity XDAC V8 tube output to a MF X-CAN V3 to Sennheiser cans. I use dbpoweramp for ripping FLAC files to an external drive and foobar2000 v0.9.4.3 for play back. IMHO this system rocks. I have Itunes with apple lossless on this machine also on the main drive. I have compared WAV and FLAC in foobar and apple lossless in Itunes briefly and found no difference between the three.
On my vista system I am assuming the operating system is getting in the way with my main rig. I need to do some research. With ethernet out it should not be but with microsoft who knows. There is a conversion from serial to packet IP at the ethernet card so that could be it.
IMHO keep the conversions to different types of protocals to a minimum. Definatly keep the D to A conversion out of the computer. Steve is the DAC expert but it seems to me that with the conversion from USB (universal serial Buss) to analog in the DAC it is one of the better ways to go.
Good luck,
P.S. I use accurate rip with dbpoweramp and have dbpoweramp set in ultra secure mode with my optical drive offset set.
I am never one to argue with steve he is very knowledgeable.
I run my PC to my main rig as follows. Computer, Ethernet cable to a Roku, SPDIF out to a Musical Fidelity TriVista tube DAC. In this setup I use Itunes as the player. On my vista machine I can hear the difference between my transport, a WAV file and an apple lossless file. There are distinct differences between the three and IMHO the transport is the best. Now when I had an XP machine I could not tell the difference between between my transport and a WAV file. Keep in mind that Itunes was the player on both machines.
For my setup in the office I use a USB DAC. Musical Fidelity XDAC V8 tube output to a MF X-CAN V3 to Sennheiser cans. I use dbpoweramp for ripping FLAC files to an external drive and foobar2000 v0.9.4.3 for play back. IMHO this system rocks. I have Itunes with apple lossless on this machine also on the main drive. I have compared WAV and FLAC in foobar and apple lossless in Itunes briefly and found no difference between the three.
On my vista system I am assuming the operating system is getting in the way with my main rig. I need to do some research. With ethernet out it should not be but with microsoft who knows. There is a conversion from serial to packet IP at the ethernet card so that could be it.
IMHO keep the conversions to different types of protocals to a minimum. Definatly keep the D to A conversion out of the computer. Steve is the DAC expert but it seems to me that with the conversion from USB (universal serial Buss) to analog in the DAC it is one of the better ways to go.
Good luck,
P.S. I use accurate rip with dbpoweramp and have dbpoweramp set in ultra secure mode with my optical drive offset set.