Well, if nobody else is going to chime in, I will. I don't have an IT at the moment (waiting for the 810 developer device moment), but I believe the tablets can play 44.1/48k files just fine (I'd be HUGELY surprised if they can't). The challenge will be to achieve "crystal quality, low distortion sound" through the headphone jack, as almost all such devices have significant hiss at the headphone jack. It's not usually a problem when listening through crappy headphones while riding the bus, but audiophile territory, it's not (YES iPOD, I'M LOOKING AT YOU!!!). And depending on the volume you'll need to adequately drive your preamp, the distortion might also be a big issue. So even assuming the N810 can play those files, they'll probably sound lousy if connected through the audio out. So...

I've been looking at various UPnP devices today, thinking about streaming the music to my audio equipment. Assuming the media bridge/player is of decent quality, it should sound good. Perhaps you could even find one with digital outputs for your audio equipment (assuming you have digital inputs available). Maybe this would work in your (as yet unannounced) situation? C'mon, say what you want to use it for!!!