Confused About Relative Sonic Impact of DAC VS. Transport


I've borrowed a Heed DT Transport to use in place of my Jollida JD100 CDP and am confused by what I'm hearing. 
My DAC is R2R ladder/non-oversampling Aqua La Voce. With Jolida in system, the sound is on the warm side of neutral without verging into tube-like, euphonics. With the Heed transport, all I seem to notice are the liabilities of every CD I play. 

If the Heed is more efficient at reading data from the CD than the Jolida, does this mean I am hearing the effect of the DAC more clearly, or am I hearing the effect of more information from the disc?

At first, I enjoyed the increased resolution, but with further listening, the sound, overall, strikes me as "thin" (as though lacking lower mids) and the highs verge on fatiguing. 

Switching out footers has some effect, as does tweaking my Schitt Loki EQ, but I'm still not very happy.

Excuse my French, but WTF is going on, here ?

BTW, John Darko, when reviewing the Aqua, recommended it as a particularly good choice for harsh-sounding CDs. 





stuartk
@stuartk , a nice system. I agree that since you’re using the Synchromesh and Steve’s cable there shouldn't be any jitter issues. I mentioned it earlier, vibration control is important to the dac and the transport, either with footers or cones in combination with a platform. Some components respond well to mass loading. 
Power cords for digital devices have a tremendous influence on sonics. You should be auditioning different PC’s since they will impart their own sonic signature to the component. Shielded cables are preferred according to many designers.
My big question to you is, are you using a linear PS on the Synchromesh or the stock wall-wart?

And as stated by others, separate power to analogue and digital is recommended. It will help reduce the noise generated by digital devices that can contaminate the mains. I’m not sure if you’ve installed dedicated lines, but the digital sources should be on an isolated power strip or conditioner with filtering.

In my digital setup every time I swapped a PC or SPDIF cable there was a change to the SQ and timbre of the music.


It seems like you are swapping the S/PDIF coax from transport to Synchromesh. Just for kicks, try replacing the Empirical coax with a quality cable and see how this affects sonics. 


lowrider; I can certainly try that but I won't have another quality digital cable until the middle of next week. Thanks for the suggestion.
lowrider: sorry-- didn't see your question. . . I'm using the stock wall-wart.

You might try a Belden 8402 interconnect.  They can be picked up pretty cheaply on e-bay.