My thoughts as well, making me wonder whether this "better" sound is actually being output or is it a feeling.
The only thing better i can see is faster response times.
I'd recommend to read this:
http://www.rme-audio.com/english/techinfo/lola.htm you can find a lot of interesting stuff over there.
Further have a look at musicxp.net to optimize the PC.
Bit-Perfect does not mean Sound-Perfect!! All kind of processes, task priorities, hardware drivers and hardware can add more latency to the signal. This is causing more or less distortion at the ouput, since we are talking of a realtime audio bit-stream.
Further this audiostream sees many different clocks on its way. Perhaps you know how much effort studios put into their systems to have one master clock for all gear.
By having the file in stored in the RAM, you got rid of quite some latency affecting sources.
If you would have a real good soundcard or external DAC with a buffer and a well done precisioin reclocker, the latency impact on playback should not be that big.
I tested playing the same file in wav or flac formats and they both use the same amount of RAM, about 175 MB.
How much total memory do you have and how much is used? I have a gig, but am upgrading to 2 as soon as I get the memory in.
I got 2gig. 1gig is reserved for the RAM disk.
Did you notice a slight difference between FLAC and WAV? A very trustful source mentioned that FLAC sounds slightly worse
than WAV, even though its lossless.
I guess its again the discussed latency effect, when converting FLAC to PCM more CPU power is required. Since its done
in realtime I'd guess there is some truth to it.
One day I'll try.