Hi Pieter,
That is quite a clear and bold statement: do not use a laptop for audio pc.
Take as the example the video "card" which is (to me) suspectible. Nothing you can do ...
Also, besides the "being packed with" most often the OS is adjusted to suit the manufacturers needs, and a more lean OS wouldn't even install.
And besides these more obvious stuff, I didn't start to mention the problems you will run into when you need many TB's of disks ...
With desktops too, you must be very careful. They too often come with dedicated stuff you can't get rid of. On this matter, I always used Compaq, and since it doesn't exist anymore, HP.
One question: When WMP/Foobar functions nearly correct - so no apparently identifiable interuptions in the audiostream, although we know they are still there under the bonnet to some extend - can I expect that XXhighend will function accordingly?
This is difficult to say;
On one hand XXHighEnd is the most lean of them all (read : uses the least resources of them all, and similar can only be reached by Linux based programs), so when it comes down to cpu useage you can expect the least problems. But as the topic
0.9u-12 --> Hiccups and Clicks shows, problems need not to be about cpu useage. It is merely about interrupts out of your control.
On an another hand, XX works very differently from the others (no Direct Sound, no Kernel Streaming, no ASIO) which make things difficult to compare.
One thing I know : when I play audio, there is nothing *I* can do to interrupt that even the slightest. But then again, the topic I referred to shows that I too can encounter hiccups which by themselves can be explained, but should not be there anyway.
Lastly on this matter, please note that effectively nobody has the real problems you described, with ChrisV as the exception, although right now I think he too found a setting that prohibits the "glicthes". I don't think this can be said from a Foobar setup (not sure though).
it has by now been proven sufficiently enough that the less the OS is performing, the better the SQ becomes. I know, this is easily said from someone who indeed can do what he wants with the PC, without the sound being interrupted (which I think is the case with 99% of people)
With this I meant :
a. performing = doing things by itself (and I did not mean this in the context of lousy performance);
b. that 99% of people (mathematically 99,95 or so) do not have problems with XX.
Ad b.
This has the context of most of the people being able to, say, overdrive for better SQ (this is about being able to run with Q1 at -2), bu many not being able to do that. Since the lower Q1 gives better sound generally (but not necessarily), here too I emphasize on the system being capable of that (which is unrelated to glitchless playback or red bars by itself).
If you'd follow the topics about people suddenly not being able anymore to use the lower Q1 settings, you'd see that this is actually my fault, although I'm not aware of the changes. This implies that changes influence microscopically *and* how much all is driven to the limit (in order to reach the best SQ).
Btw, when the nVidia indeed may cause problems, try to find the (by now 3 years old) 81.98 display driver version. For sure that won't allow current technical capabilities (like h.264 or HDMI output), but this one is proven to let VIDEO work flawlessly. And since video is controlled by audio ...
If that version won't work under Vista ... bad luck.
When you use USB toward the audio device (DAC) neither the Realtec or the nVidia will be used. But it's not about that. It is about that those things may generate (or need) interrupts. They just influence. And for sure *that* may cause anomalies when the priorities for that are set wrongly (by the driver !). This is about the ("PCI Latency") tool that works under XP nut not under Vista, allowing you to change those priorities (or better : the length a PCI devices may occupy the system(s bus). Maybe by now such a tool exists for Vista ? I didn't look for many months.
Peter