If you spend your day in front of a laptop and your music comes from that same machine, you already own most of a hi-fi system. What's usually missing is an understanding of the path your audio takes from a file (or a stream) to your ears, and where in that path quality is actually won or lost. This post walks through that path end to end: the digital transport protocols, why the DAC is the pivot point of the whole chain, and the right way to wire a computer or phone into headphones or an analog amplifier.