I've been reading, prior to finding this thread, at XXhighend forums. Been there before but ended up there last night. Some BIG claims.
basically less "electronic pollution, less psu ripple" ...less load on your system will cause less jitter that is given to the DAC.
The stuff these guys are doing to their PCs is what I was doing with Windows 2000 trying to make it stable for audio playback, battling the meek PCI bus and latency issues...it's quite ridiculous and obsessive. Turn off your wireless, turn off any usb port not in use, my god man, did you leave your monitor on?!?!
I doubt anyone ABX'd that player against J. river or Foobar. The author of XXhighend says ASIO sounds "bad"....... ?
Having to load an entire album from Windows explorer into ram ...why have a computer then? If you're not going to utilize the features the make managing your collection fun and easy and still sound good, you try to make the experience as elitist as possible....yikes!? The obsession with bit-perfect, S/PDIF vs. USB is laughable........
DC