My experience after lost of 20k$

@desktopguy  Excellent post with quality points. Wish we had more posts like yours (across all threads). 

If you paid 20K for PC audio, that's a prime example of buyer beware...

In general, don't understand why folks say PC audio sounds awful. I have a hard time with hiss and pop of vinyl. + Bass from vinyl systems can cause feedback at concert level volumes + digital bass just sounds better to me. I have thoroughly enjoyed 24Bit recordings (if truly a master recording not up-sampled)  although a direct to disk recording is very good just not as good imo.  I have a windows based $600 pc with JRiver software (wonderful software). the ripped data or HD goes to a PS Audio/Cullen modified DAC (fairly cheap) via an high end Audioquest TOS link. Yes at very rare times the TOS looses sync for a few seconds but sounds better than USB stuff I tried (AR DAC 8 was good but not as good for me). For $20K something not right....

Staggeringly sober 😊 numbers on streaming vs physical media:

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/it%E2%80%99s-stream-stream-stream-stream-world

Interesting article but did not say what the quality is. If it’s mp3 not interested. Wish HD tracks had more selection, too much obscure stuff