Tim,

If that's what Howard meant then so be it. He's entitled to his opinion. However if that's the case then his view is in direct contradiction to my own experiences in this area, and those of many others I know. I have heard, frankly, massive differences in DACs used in computer audio set-ups, the last of which was at a friend's house where the in-built Wolfson DAC on his media player was completely outperformed by my Sony DAS-R1, which resulted in him buying a Sony for himself

I'm sure there are plenty of other high-end DACs out there that would have done the same thing. I don't want to be accused of over the top championing of the Sony

Marco.