[Brad]

If you are listening to the analog outs, then the sound card must have converted the digital signal from the CD or hard drive using a DAC (Digital to Analog converter)

[John Ashman]

I use iTunes (mac or PC and free) which seems to be much like that other player pictured early, but is very easy to set up and run, is free, and can use lossless compression.  Rather than buying a sound card, I use Airport Express to digitally and losslessly transmit the sound to the AE and then run a digital cable to the DACs in my receiver, thereby completely isolating the computer from the audio system.  It sounds stunning, even with AAC, and even better with Lossless.

[Brad]

John,

Have you had any problems with wireless speeds using the Apple Lossless codec?

What cable set did you get to go with the Airport Express?
Been looking very hard at getting an AE for the new house when I move in a couple of weeks.

[BillyM]

Adarsh, spend the cash for the chaintech sound card, and surf ebay for a cheap Adcom or Parasound entry-level dac.  Both of these utilize the CrystalAudio input chips and BrownBurr-63 DAC's.  Fantastic sound for the price (around $200)  I have made the change over, and have converted a few friends to digital transit as well.  ...each one has admitted it was the best price/performance upgrade they had done.

...as for Foobar VS Winamp.  ...read my thread in this circle.  I found a .dll to get kernel streaming in the latest Winamp!  Foobar sound through the well-know and pretty winamp gui!  I did a very-well setup blind A/B test repeatedly, where I was pointing out foobar over winamp 95% of the time before the plugin, and almost exactly 50% afterwards.

--BillyM

[ted_b]

Brad, that was going to be my question as well.  You beat me to it.

I'm hearing lots of folks having bandwidth/speed issues trying to stream lossless over wireless.   It's a great idea on paper, though, and if you get it working, it's a great solution.

Also, John, what AAC bitrate do you use?  I use 224 AAC for my iPod and wondered how it sounded on a serious system vs lossless.  Assume the top end gets truncated somewhat?  (But for sending to my family room for party music, background music, etc who cares.)

Ted

[Adarsh]

Just to let you know folks with wireless problems, I've got  a D-Link 802.11 G router sending VOB files, that's correct, DVD files off the server to my laptop, and have no glitches.

-A