As Mac points out, we said in the original post that we were using the analogue outs from the Denon. In effect, all we were comparing were the A/D converters in the USB device and the Realtec on-board A/D. We chose a digitally recorded CD in order to present a wide frequency and dynamic range to the test equipment.

One important factor is that the judges were all under thirty, so could be expected to have reasonable hearing and they were all musicians, except one who was a drummer. (Sorry drummers - couldn't resist it.)

Once the audio is in the PC, it doesn't matter how many tracks you have, because it's just number crunching and if you mix within the digital domain and then export the result as digital media, all the internal audio is used for is monitoring.

I admit that this wasn't an exhaustive test - it was just an attempt to get us all to think about how we react to marketing and what we really need out of a system.

ROG.