Is computer audio a bust?

Computer audio is the best architecture, allowing the greatest control, media options, innovation, and integration--especially feeding USB DAC's. It's the future, here now, IMO.

A clean Windows system running only jRiver is not very complex. Add virus protection and you're set. I'd recommend an i5 chip for overkill, enough memory to stage media there, and a $60 USB backup disk. Phenomenal laptops are far less than $1000, ($300 used) and the capability of a $50 media center software is mind-blowing.

I have the Linn, the CD transport, and the Magnum Dynalab, but computer audio is the train leaving the station, and I'm on board with no regrets.

Mapman,

I haven't tried anything but JRiver, but I did a lot of research before choosing it. The $49 price is a pittance, but it funds a lot of good development and support, and, as a software person, I am impressed by the JRiver product.

I had a few quirks ripping CD's with JRiver, such as a few albums listing tracks twice, and one CD spinning off a separate cover icon for each track. But nothing bad, and it could have been my refusal to read the instructions.

I also chose FLAC because it was lossless, and I couldn't find any advantages of other formats. I don't believe wav offers anything over FLAC. Haven't tried DSD, yet.

I decided to try CA when a CD transport started acting up, and it caught me by surprise when the system sound quality improved dramatically. There are some external variables--I'm using a very good Wireworld USB cable, and it may be that my DAC just does a better job on USB than coax.

Cheers

I bemoan the unintended consequences of digital technology--from the idling of workers, to looking at a screen instead of being in the physical world. There is also something elegant and beautiful about analog solutions, be they fascinating tonearms, exotic cables, are engineering monuments for spinning a CD.

That said, a quality USB cable can do a phenomenal job of delivering a digital stream from a computer to a DAC, where the final quality and subjective preference is determined by the chosen DAC.

Agear, I'm using the Wireworld Starlight 7. Nothing exotic. It had good street buzz, and I was pleased with the results. It's connecting an HP laptop to a Benchmark.

To digress, I configured JRiver to cache the entire file into memory, up to a gigabyte at a time, which mitigates the "spinning media" issues, or at least moves them to a error-free source.

... disc spinners will be here for a very, very, long time..

One major advantage of computer audio is that it takes the spin out. Ripped discs can play directly from memory...and you can have endless bit-perfect copies as backup...and you can delete tracks that are cringe-worthy, or reorder tracks.