many a question to be answered

You might want to distill this to one question.

so i figured out the whole bit-matched playback shmorgeshborg, and got my rotel the decode the audio instead of the xfi; pretty similar sound, but the rotel is a bit more open and natural. a bit annoying however to make direct comparisons thought as theres about a 5 dB difference between the two.

anyway, are there any really weak links in my system?

and also, does anyone heavily recommend the x-meridian?

down to two questions. progress. eliminate one more and the responses should start flowing in.

Where do you see bit matched playback? The bitmatch as far as I can tell is only for recording.

While we are at it just to make sure... are you using the kernel streamer plugin with foobar2000? Just need to make sure you are bypassing the windows kmixer. (I prefer the kernel streamer as opposed to asio).

You also might want to try using the coax digital output on the x-fi just to see how it sounds too (instead of the optical). You may prefer one to the other. Just something to look into for the heck of it.

If you are thinking of going to the x-meridian I would suggest just getting the x-fi elite pro. It has much better dacs and is leagues better than the other x-fi's. A very very large upgrade from the rest of the line. My elite pro comes very close to the Benchmark DAC1 ($1000 giant killer of a DAC). I still use it to connect to my DAC1.

Make sure you turn off all the extra stuff in the x-fi audio control panel (go through each tab and uncheck all the options to turn things on). But leave on the 24 bit crystalizer. It's a great upsampler.