The sound out of jplay 6 is astonishing

Depends on how you set things up, jplaymini is the player. But I use foobar -> 64bit aaio -> jplay. I don't use the streaming features.

You can use asio bridge for apps that doesn't support it. I use MPC-BE -> wasapi asio bridge -> jplay for video.

The difference at this point in windows should be instantly noticeable. Assuming you got a 5k+ audio setup of course.

I actually think the problem is my DAC being sensitive to input jitter, so if your DAC handle crappy input better, then jplay would not be needed.

I'll be getting a different DAC in a month time so I will find out...

Also going to be trying out AES vs the USB that I'm using right now.

Alright, AES is good stuff, turning the buffer size to min was key. No longer needing jplay 6 with aes.