True....pretty audible differences in sound quality....much dark background which really gets the stage deeper, higher and wider with better space between instruments.
I was on dedicated PC/laptop including a mac based setup for a very long time. Have made extreme tweaks, have run several versions of windows, linux distros and even run Mac on PC, windows on MAC. In between I did have varying setups including a total 3-way active setup that offered me various levels of tuning, DRC tweaks etc.. Have used several media players and have spent hours on various forums tweaking endlessly.
There was major enhanced over running on non-optimized OS/players, but ALLO trumps whatever I could achieve on a computer based setup.
But laptop based setup offers certain freedom which is a compromise over these transports.
Given a choice I would take either, but the computer one with tweaks.
Yes i have used digione and digione sig in past and loved them. Somehow spdif is not strong point in my system so was finding it little sharp, maybe the coax cables also put in their color. Usb signature is very clean compared to laptop and definetely better than digione signature for me. Even old digione will trounce any laptop with ease.