AvFan,

I bougth a Dell XPS-410 with Vista a year ago that hasn't had any use. So it's been turned into my media room "test" machine for high-end audio. Directly connecting the Dell to the 990 via USB gives me lots of drop-out (Vista & USB?). However, when I connect the Dell to an external DAC: Native Instruments Audio Kontrol 1 (http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=audiokontrol1_us) the sound is terrific. I just can't determine if it's really utilizing 192k, 96k, etc. . .

My other equipment: Magnepans all around, Classe & Classe amps.

From what I've read, the optical inputs won't allow 192k or 96k, I may be wrong.

If I had it to do again, I'd buy a MAC for the media room--you can even run any flavor of Windows on it.

Michael