OK, so it seems that a majority of folks around here use Foobar. I'm just wondering if playback of flac files (ripped with EAC) will be the same on J. River Media Jukebox 12, or is Foobar better?? I'll be using the digital out on my souncard and sending it to my receiver to deal with DAC. I'm still a little hesitent to treat flac off of my computer as being as good as CD off a dedicated hardware player though.

There shouldn't be any audible difference between the two, but if you're concerned about bit-exact playback then you'll probably want to use foobar2000 with the kernel streaming component.

Is the Kernel streaming component on foobar2000 like outputting directly to an ASIO driver? WIth J. River Media Jukebox 12 you can do that. Does that bypass the windows and other B.S. as well?

Both kernel streaming and ASIO bypass Windows XP's KMixer. So (barring any other factors) either foobar2000 or J. River Media Jukebox should be able to produce bit-exact audio output.

Incidentally, there's also an ASIO component for foobar2000 on that same page, should it interest you.

That really depends on the setup you have, both of your CD player and your PC.

Not the newest computer in the world, but :Dell P4, 1GB RAM, cheap (sub $50) soundcard using optical out, 25ft cable run from computer to PC, into MArantz SR5002, playing flac files with J River Music Jukebox 12, or Foobar using ASIO driver.

CD player would be Oppo 980 through HDMI to Marantz SR5002 with a 6ft cable run.

Aside from basic sound quality, I'm wondering how often my computer might "hiccup" or whatever during playback. I haven't really tested it much. It's played what I have tried so far just fine. Never had a problem with Itunes and MP3's.

So you should be, if your computer is digital out, and you are using a secure ripper to create your flac files, then the PC would win in a contest over any dedicated hardware player on the market (right upto the $40,000 players), secure rippers can recover from errors, realtime players do not.

Depending on the quality of your audio interface, you might even do better going analog from the computer to the receiver. A high quality audio interface will nearly always have a far superior DA converter compared to virtually any consumer/pro-sumer level CD player or receiver.

Of course, you need to use ASIO/Kernel Streaming to prevent Windows from chewing up the digital signal and your receiver would need a "direct" feature where you can disable the on board DSP and stay analog all the way through the receiver.

This is what many audophiles concerned with 2-channel playback from a computer are doing. If you are interested in multi-channel, it's probably easier to just go digital.

Neither of you guys addressed the strong possibility that the sound card in question may be re-sampling to 48kHz.

Thanks for the help so far. I don't know. I have a soundblaster live 24 bit sound card. I plan on upgrading my soundcard to get an optical out because I don't think my current PC set-up will beat my receiver for DAC and I don't know if I can get a card that can for my budget (reccomendations for a budget card that will fit my needs appreciated). I only care about 2 channel by the way. I haven't as of yet done anything to my computer to optimize it for audio accept install ASIO driver, so if it is going to be $$$$ or time consuming I may just use the Oppo and play CD's. I was hoping it would be as simple as getting a modest, or even better, a cheap new card at the most . . . as long as the program I use for playback can be bit-perfect.
By the way, there won't be any problems with running these files from an external hard drive via USB connection, right?

EDIT: looks like my SOund Blaster Live 24bit card does indeed convert everything to 48Khz . . . definately need a new card. I guess all I need is a card with a digital out that will allow me to pass 2 channel 44.1 Khz. suggestions??

Well, I did say "A high quality audio interface", which would rule out virtually all SoundBlasters.




This seems to be the favorite sub-$100 card among the HTPC crowd (I have one myself):
HT OMEGA STRIKER 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card

There is also an upgraded version:
HT OMEGA CLARO 7.1 Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Card

And a super premium version. Basically the same as the CLARO, but with upgraded opamps:
HT OMEGA CLARO Plus+ 7.1 Channels 24-bit 192KHz PCI Interface Sound Card

If you're sure you're going to go digital, the STRIKER is probably the way to go. It has optical and coaxial, both in and out, which is rare for a card at this price point. Also, the analog quality is unbelievable for a sub-$100 card.

The CLAROs are significantly better and have analog quality on par with serious pro-audio interfaces. But if you're not going to use analog, it's probably not worth the extra cash.

Even if you decide to go with the STRIKER you should try hooking up both digital and analog and do an A/B comparison. Especially since you seem to be primarily interested in 2-channel. I don't have any experience with the Marantz receiver you mentioned (I would expect it's pretty good), but many receivers in its price range can be bested by surprisingly humble sound cards. So it's always worth trying both to see which is really better.