Hi, I'm Walter Hartman and I'd like to share some of my experiences exploring setups for an audio playback system based on Foobar2000.

This is about 2 channel audio systems with a digital front end and tube amp back end. But much of what I talk about here is applicable with any other type of amp as well.

I use Foobar2000 as a music server, running on small footprint PCs and feeding audio to a tube amp. I remote control the Foobar2000 server over Wi-Fi using my Windows Phone running a mobile app I wrote -- Foobar2000 Copilot.

My life has been enriched by music, and I've directly benefited from the work of so many people, who have crafted tube amps, DACs, speakers, and software such as Foobar2000, and all those artists out there creating and recording great music.

I'm not a maker of audio hardware, nor do I sing or perform, but I do write software -- so writing Foobar2000 Copilot is my small way of hopefully contributing to and giving back to the audio community.

I'd also like to prefix all of this by saying there is no one 'perfect' answer -- especially when it comes to music, which is so personal and subjective. So each of us in the end has to find what works for us -- go on our own personal journey -- but we can all benefit from sharing experiences.

I'd also like to say for me it is more about the enjoyment of the music, and not about spending countless hours setting up and tweaking systems, chasing diminishing returns...

When setting up my systems or A/B'ing different components, I've often found myself more into my left brain being all analytical and technical -- analyzing and dissecting-- but I find in that mode I'm not really in my right brain just enjoying the music...

That after all the tech talk, that I have to at some point turn off all that analytical chatter, and say things are good enough, and just open myself to the pure beauty of the music... that I have to not think about it, but just feel it...

That in the end like any art, all the machinery has to dissolve away so you don't see it at all, and what remains is the purity and beauty of the music...