software vs hardware
I have a long history with audio (40 years) and a long history with computers (20 years) but the two are separate. The convenience of having my 3000 CDs available from a screen or a remote and also acess to high resolution music offerings has me thinking maybe I should...
I don't want to spend a lot of money to start and basically there seems to be two methods of optimizing getting the audio from the computer to the audio system. One is to use software like jriver, foobar, jplay or some other to clean up the audio stream before it leaves the computer and then stream it to and external dac via usb, or through a sound card. The other method is to play to a USB to S/PIDIF converter such as the musical fidelity Vlink and rely on the hardware to clean up the digital stream to the dac.
Maybe using both is the way to go (more complexity, more cost) or maybe the logitech touch is the way to go (least complexity possibly about the same cost) [ie. jriver with jplay plugin and musical fidelity Vlink vs logitech touch or maybe just the halide DAC hd].
Has anyone compared the software vs hardware approach.
My system is fairly high resolution - a couple of multi disc (CD/SACD/DVDA) players, a morrison pre, a couple of outlaw audio 7075 amps feeding a linkwitz electronic crossover driving a custom pair of linkwitz orion 3.3 speakers.
I'd be happy to hear any experiences and opinions.
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