Gentlemen,
Thank you Kindly. If you are not using the 3rd party software, how do Windows and Apple OSs know to send something out the USB port to your DAC (and out the headphone jack)?
Also, DACs like some Meridians come with Windows drivers, while Apple doesn't need drivers. What do those drivers do?
It pays to use 3rd party software as both a library system for browsing and selection as well as playback of the albums/tracks you wish. I use JRiver for a number of important reasons, primarily because it handles all the media types I want: CD, SACD, downloads, BD-A, BD-V, etc. all in multichannel. It even handles cable TV watching/recording with an external cable card tuner, eliminating my cable box. And, JRiver is cheap. But, it is so comprehensive, it also now acts as my control preamp for audio and video. My old Mch prepro and disk player are no longer used at all.
But, JRiver is not so easy to learn at first, due simply to the huge feature set. I use only a fraction of its features. It also supports custom tagging of your media files for excellent search capabilities, though that is a lot of manual work, necessary because the tags embedded in the media by the producers is lousy and inconsistent, especially for the classical music I primarily listen to. It needs a lot of editing. I have something well over 20 TB of media on my NAS, most of it comprehensively tagged, although chapter tagging within BD audio or video albums still remains far too clumsy and manual in JRiver. I keep hoping they will improve it before diving in manually. But, tagging CD and SACD down to the track level is quite good. And, I can select albums/tracks beautifully for playback using JRiver's excellent JRemote iPad application via Wifi.
Some people swear there are huge sonic differences among various software players. I can see that in some cases, like up sampling with various dither algorithms, etc. My library is almost entirely hi Rez Mch, though, so I do not play with that. JRiver sounds pretty good to me and it does about 85% of what I need and want.
I use Windows. Parameters in JRiver instruct it to send audio to my Dirac Live software for room EQ. Parameters in Dirac instruct it to then send the audio to the driver for my Exasound e28 Dac, which was supplied by Exasound. That links directly and automatically to the DAC via a USB connection from the PC, regardless of which physical USB port it is connected to. The Exasound driver finds that automatically.
So, this daisy chained connection of software "virtual sound cards" plus the USB connection makes up the audio signal path, and it is quite easy to set it up. There is usually little need to interact with Windows Sound Properties directly. The software does that and presents you with a list of what is available and connected on your system. The video signal uses HDMI directly to my TV monitor from the computer HDMI port. There are no lip synch problems. JRiver controls that in audio-video playback.
If CD stereo is all you want, then Roon might be an easier to learn and use choice, or others, as well. None of them do nearly enough of what I need, though.