Quote Originally Posted by blackraven View Post
I have been resisting computer based music as I like the no hassle of putting a CD in a player without having to fire up the computer (although, this will make me buy a SS hard drive for instant on) , scroll through menu's and play lists. I doubt that I will ever get rid of spinning disc's. When I come home from work and I want to listen to music I can have it going in 30 seconds then crash on the sofa. However, I recently bought JRiver and have downloaded some Blue Coast music.
Personally I wonder with an 'network player' of this sort could work for me. As a classical music listener almost exclusively, I deal with multi-movement works so selecting single "songs" and random play are basically useless. Construction permanent playlists is also pretty useless. Further, I like to be able to have variety of music search approaches.

Wrangling discs is a process I've always disliked -- that goes back to the pre-CD LP days, and was probably the biggest single reason I abandoned LPs for CDs, (even though early CDs and CDPs sounded no better, if as good, as LPs). There is still disc handling in case of CDs though it much, MUCH less of a hassle.

So for me I really want the power of a flexible, full-scale UI that Foobar2000 or JRiver can provide. For me it seems effectively faster to boot my computer and use Foobar to locate the compositions I want to suit my current mood.

Be this as it may, the Marantz looks like a great DAC. I note in the Stereophile review that John Atkinson suggest that a USB link to a computer gives the best result vs. S/PDIF or Ethernet.