Ya-know- I have been playing around with these computer playback systems over the last few months and I have this nagging feeling that due to the 'complications' of having to set specific settings etc. many people are actually listening to what they think are hi-res files and in fact are not?
The files are being manipulated by the playback software and hardware so it becomes suspect.
You're absolutely right. But the situation is even worse than that, because on a lot of machines (e.g. Windows XP and its infamous "kmixer") even if you get the sampling rate right, the operating system can
still munge the audio data. There is, for example,
no way to get clean audio data out of iTunes running on Windows XP, except in certain unusual hardware combinations, thanks to the mysteries of kmixer.
This is why the Squeezebox (and the Airport Express) are so nice... you actually get clean transport data, even if it does have moderately high jitter, without having to muck about with issues you really shouldn't have to and probably don't realize you need to. Macs are fine too provided you stick to CD audio. Anything higher res than 44.1kHz means you have to know what you're doing.