new updates in transports or are they obsolete ?

Semi wrote:
"Can you suggest some hardwares & softwares to setup a computer base audio system?"

You will need a laptop or a quiet tower with USB2.0, at least 2.0GHz Pentium. I would recommend the Off-Ramp Turbo USB to S/PDIF coax converter to a conventional DAC such as the excellent Benchmark DAC-1 (get a new one) or a modified Perpetual P-3A. The P-3A has the advantage of I2S input. I will be offering a USB to I2S converter at the new year. This is the native interface for the DAC chips, so it eliminates the S/PDIF interface, which is even better. If you want balanced outputs, the Benchmark is the best choice.

The sound card may compete with the USB interface, so you may need to defeat this. I talk about many of these things in my article on Computer Audio for positive-feedback.com. Look for this to be published soon.

Here is the article in Positive-feedback.com:
http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue22/nugent.htm

Audioengr, can you comment on the amount of hard drive storage space that is required per CD in lossless format? Thanks.

Averages 30MBytes, but some tracks may be 50 MBytes. It talks about this in my paper.

This thread really got me thinking.

Apple has a hardware called Airport Express which has optical out from what I read. Even though Positive Feedback's article advised against optical output due to jitter, but I assumed jitter will not apply to this case when data are read from HD and broadcast over WiFi.

Is that the theoretical best setup for sound vs. USB-S/PDIF converter using wire? I still prefer to use a dedicate player like iPod that has digital out feeding DAC directly, but newer iPod does not have digital out.

Another question is iTune read CD multiple times until all data are retrieved, similar to EAC? EAC runs slow, I will rather use iTune if it does the job equally well.