Like mentioned in other posts here, in time delivery of the data to the dac is of the utmost importance. The whole chain should be considered. I have been playing music from my htpc for years and I really like the sound. With a DDC, jitterbugs and Fidelizer the sound that comes out of the DAC is wonderful. Last week I installed a new htpc and when I tried to install Fidelizer I couldn’t since the key is specifically for every installed copy. Yesterday I got the new key and lo and behold, the sound really improved so much. I was enjoying the music again. To me that is proof that the output of the pc is a crucial part of the chain. Guess the DDC can only correct partially. There are very expensive dedicated audiophile pc’s but with Fidelizer and the DDC I think those are not necessary. (I only use the htpc for audio and set Fidelizer to very strict settings) btw I am not sponsored by Fidelizer :), I use JRiver as player using ASIO as protocol. I rip my CD’s with Exact Audio Copy at high setting.