I've recently started playing around with it and my impressions are about the same. Very good sound, especially in hibernate mode, but as you said the interface is a pain. I've tried it with Apple lossless, wav and Flac files. It will play all of them however with the Apple lossless there are frequent pops between tracks. That has not happened with either wav or Flac files. The version I have, v.4.0 interfaces with iTunes & Foobar, according to the JPlay site they will be releasing a new version that will also interface with JRiver. When interfaced with iTunes it seems that you lose the ability to do a wireless output to Apple TV or Airport Express. It also does not seem to like switching between sampling rates in iTunes with USB out. I'm not sure if I'm not doing something correct or if that is inherent to JPlay. I do plan to play around with it a bit more especially after the interface with JRiver is released.
Regards,
Ed
Regards,
Ed