According to what I learned from HRT, the newer more "advanced" operating systems like Windows 7 actually default music playback to the lowest common denominator, even when the music player is playing a 96 khz track and the DAC supports that data rate. Windows XP, the old ancient about-to-be-discontinued operating system gets it right and sets the data rate at 96 khz without effort. So in the new O/S's you have to dig into documentation and figure out how to set the data rate higher.