What is the sound quality from PC to home stereo.

I am using my PC as the database/transport to a Tri Vista 21 DAC. This then feeds the Bryston BP25 Pre to 4 7BST monoblocks. The speakers are Infinity RS1B's with a crossover. Foobar is the frontend and the files are ripped to WAV and tagged with masstager. The soundcard is the Chaintec 710 with bit perfect output to the DAC. Kernel streaming is enabled in Foobar. Output to the DAC is redbook standard 44.1.

How does it sound? Well, on great recordings it is better than a cheap transport, better than my Levinson transport, and better than others I have tested in my home environment. On crap recordings it sounds awful, this is no fault of the system, it sounds terrible no matter what transport is used.

Good luck and have fun

Somewhere, some how, some way the digital signal from your computer must go through a DAC to play on your stereo.... it's just a matter of where it is.

If you use the analog outs of your computer, you are using the computers DAC, if you ran analog outs of say an Apple Airport Express, you'd be using the DAC in it... see what I mean?? As for sound quality, when done right, it is very good, and there are many who argue better than high end transports as there is less jitter.

BTW Which Infinite Slpe speakers do you have?? I still have a pair of JSE IS 1.0's and 1.8's....

It depends on the sound card or DAC; assuming a decent CD Drive and everything else.

I ran direct to my amp from an M-Audio Revolution and it was pretty good - couldn't touch my Simaudio Moon Nova; but definitely good. I have since switched to a Stereolink USB DAC and the gap has shrunk even more.

Certainly a lot better than my Sony DVP-NS4000 DVD Player.

Note: Using Foobar as the player without any tweaks.

Kennyt,
The Ifinite slopes that I have are the smaller ones from around 1987. I'll look and see which model#. They still sound great.

Bodine -- It sounds like you've invested some time and money in your system, so I question whether you'd ever be satisfied using whatever soundcard is in your computer as the DAC.

I recently had the Wavelelngth Brick -- a DAC that accepts the usb output of your computer. At $1750, it's not cheap, but it and the iMac G5 together are better than any CD player I've ever had (most recently the Exemplar/Denon 2800 -- a very good model, itself). I only got rid of the Brick to upgrade to the Wavelength Cosecant.