[globiboulga]

OK, a bit of background and then I am interested in you opinion guys.

I started to get interested in music AND electronic while researching to replace my Sony MiniDisc. I loved this thing: the sound was great, it was small and portable, battery life was excellent. But Sony went the propriteray way (remind you of something?) and lost the battle, ignoring the mp3 fad and pushing its own stuff. MiniDisc were appalling at linking to PC at the time.
Because the focus was music quality - and I also hate doing like everyone else, I ended up getting a Cowon X5. I was happy.
But then, I started to push the quality aspect of things and started to FLAC all my CD collection and to hate the music quality I was getting out of my PC when I was not on the road.
Here comes the debate then, between the separate sound system, the sound card, the DAC and all...

While I am still debating what to do I sorted the options:
- get a separate sound system for my study and stick with the CDs or add a proper DAC to it to hook it to the PC - that could be high end sound card with DAC in it
- get a non portable headphone set up (preferable since I am the only one in the family kinda interested in HIFI) and add a proper DAC to it to hook to the PC
- get a portable headphone set up that I can use with my laptop as well - both amp and DAC

And this is where I noticed the issue really: I was back in the Hi-Fi space and its weird pricing policies, dubious quality and value propositions (thank god for this forum by the way).

Two things really bug me now as I am trying to sort out which option I am going to use and a budget is that Dacs are at the centre of an electronic set up and yet there is little information about these. More significantly prices are all other the place: I mean, come on the best DAC around is a music card AND a high end recording AND a heaphone amplifier device, decently priced for that matter - e-mu 404 while high end products shoot in the $'000s. This is ridiculous. How is this justified?

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[Redo]

I personally like to have my music separate from the PC. That way though reboots, booting up games, and browsing the web, NO sounds or dead silences effect my music listening. That for me means a separate CDP or CDP/DAC for listening to music.

I would personally go for a DAC that has multiple digital inputs, and a selector switch to choose between different digital inputs. This way one hookup can be from the PC, and the other from the CDP. Then you can switch back and forth all you want.

As for portable, think of portable as "listening while on the bus" portable. So if you need to listen to high quality sound while roaming around on the streets or in transit, consider a portable setup. Otherwise, it's a waste of money to go that route.