ASIO/ JRiver versus Windows Media

On my rig, Gateway dual core, 4 gigs ram, windows 7 - windows media sounds flat, undeminsenional, pretty poor. I have firewire going into am M-audio solo spidf converter-into Monarchy DIP Upsampler, into XDAC V3with PSU into a Cayin A50T/B&M 685's. The J River with WASAPI sounds awesome. Transparent, detail, resolving, non-fatiguing, excellent instrumnet placement, deep and wide soundstage. I didn't get any of that with windows media. I am going by very good quality recordings.

Jay, where/what is doing the D/A? I used J River with and without ASIO and there was no discernible difference. I rip .WAV and send PCM out USB to decoding in external DAC (Ayre QB-9). I stuck with ASIO because it removes some layers of software so you have less potential of the bits being changed before outputting to DAC.

I am using HP presario laptop customized 500 gig hard drive and there is no partition for ram its all used.And I use WAV not Lossless to rip sorry kinda new to this. And I have a musiland 02 which handles USB to spidf (coax)and up samples 24/192 then to my DAC which is a musiland SVDAC06 and it accepts 24/192 and outputs it aswell. And before everyone kicks my equipment I plan on upgrading but I wanted to see what all the excitment was over computer audio was.So for now this is what I have and this already sounds better than my sony DVP-S7700 with emperical mods.Much deeper and higher soundstage and the detail is amazing so I am not unhappy just trying to learn. My amps are 2 plus John Wright modded Meitner STR-50,s and a tube amp made custom by Ideal Innovations and its SET using 2 6B4G or 6A3 which is an octal 2A3 and can be run ultra linear with a KT-88 or A 6550 and I prefer original Genalex Gold lions or Tung-Sol 6550. And I use a Audio gd preamp now and it replaced a Diva Audio M-7 pre with the outboard tube rectified power supply so it is very underestimated IMO.Thanks for the input!