I was very happy camper until a friend dropped by with his…. I note that Jplay and the power supply made the most dramatic changes in my case.
JPLAY VS HQPLAYER UPGRADE
Each upgrade added small increments to the DAC’s performance (while compromising user experience more and more). On top I bought the Jplay, Fidelizer and AO Optimizer. Ultimately I made a custom PC with a low ripple power supply, low consumption CPU which was underclocked, low latency (CL7) RAM, SSD, no fan, etc. I started stopping services, and trying different software. Once I bought a decent DAC (I mean my Nad M51) I started wondering whether tweaking the PC could improve the performance of the DAC.
I was enjoying the sound since it was my first experience and had no comparison points. At that point I remember using Foobar2000 for playback with an Asus Xonar Essence STX card. Given how Mac is typically more expensive, I started the journey with a generic PC I was using for other purposes besides audio. I read a lot of great things about the Auralic Aries being an excellent streamer, however at this point in time it remains beyond my reach. I have invested a lot of time into searching a decent transport into my Nad M51 at a decent price. The detail (read:resolution) obtained via PC upsampling rather than the DAC doing this upsampling combined with the degree of customization of filters and noise filters is simply outstanding ! Much much better than Jriver/Jplay/Jplaymini/Foobar, etc. In addition, HQplayer in combination with Windows 10 sounds amazing. Even before applying Audiophile Optimizer and without Fidelizer, the sound is already great. As of recently, I learned that Windows sound quality improved tremendously with Windows 10.