Well Mushi I haven't had much practice working on computer problems over the past 2 years becuase since I switched to Mac I don't have any blue screens, fatal errors, virus invasions, registry nonsense or any other of that crud to deal with. I am just forced to spend time on Final Cut and other apps and actually working instead of fixing the Gates Gifts that keeps on giving and giving and giving.....
You are fooling yourself if you think it is as simple as the chipset or, even more moronically, if you think that asus manufacturing a Mac designed by Apple is going to be the same as them manufacturing the generic cut-throat- priced junk that is badly designed by Acer or Dell or whoreallycaresifitrunswindowsanyway corp. Just one example... I actually use an external DAC. But the DAC in my Mac is made by TI and specs out higher than a lot of the high-priced externals people rave about here. The SQ isn't just the chip. The discussions around here recently havebeen analyzing the effects of solder! I will believe my (and lots of other peoples') ears and be very confident that what my Mac is deliveringn is the result of a ciompany that actually cares about the user experience and designed a machine and had it manufactured to such a high quality that I am constantly thrilled with the performance i experience - audio and in numerous other ways.
And btw, I do like my music without all the hissing. Love how that gets mentioned as if it is an afterthought or somehow irrelevant to the typically superior Mac out-of-the-box music experience. If you can't afford a Mac, then fine, but the sour grapes arguments are really pathetic.
And one last thing. You couldn't convince me to run Bootcamp on my Mac for all the pirated CDs in China. Why would I ever want that Windows garbage on my lovely Mac?