Beosound 5 & Windows XP sound quality?

I was just wondering about beosound 5's sound quality.

I stream music from my PC to my B&O system. In the days I started with B&O and serious music listening I used a windows XP PC for streaming and I remember that when I upgraded to windows 7, sound quality improved noticably.

I researched why and found that windows XP kernel mixing downgraded audio quality a lot. WIndows 7 was made wtih a better audio mixing kernel. I later discovered ASIO which totally bypasses the entire mixing and delivers bit perfect playback.

Beosound 5 runs on windows XP. Does it use something like ASIO to bypass the kernel mixer?

Do you think that despite B&O's own (better) DAC on the ML-board, windows influences the digital audio-stream?

Would they have overlooked that issue during developing the BM/S5. That's why they haven't used a state of the art mainboard at that time. It's main purpose is just software based. 

If your rips are full CD quality, that's what you'll get.if your digital audio files are larger containers...regardless of provenance...up to 96khz/24 bit, the BS5 will only output them at CD quality, regardless if you have an SPDIF connection to BL5's, for instance.