John,
1) You didn't say what aspect of your system is disappointing. What are we helping you fix? 2) you didn't mention your cables. Although its clear from many posts that you can't use cables to "fix" a system, it is clear that cables make a difference, e.g. some interconnects roll off the highs. Most of what you've listed above should sound very good. I too was using a Pioneer dvd/cd player as a transport while waiting for my expensive transport to arrive and found it to be decent (you mentioned the digital cable and the HTS dacs so I know you are not using the dacs in the dvd player). btw: xlr or BNC terminations on digital cables are supposed to be better than rca (not truly 75 ohms). Do you have some kind of power conditioning? Does you system sound better at 2am than at 7pm (because of dirty power)? lots of things to consider.
1) You didn't say what aspect of your system is disappointing. What are we helping you fix? 2) you didn't mention your cables. Although its clear from many posts that you can't use cables to "fix" a system, it is clear that cables make a difference, e.g. some interconnects roll off the highs. Most of what you've listed above should sound very good. I too was using a Pioneer dvd/cd player as a transport while waiting for my expensive transport to arrive and found it to be decent (you mentioned the digital cable and the HTS dacs so I know you are not using the dacs in the dvd player). btw: xlr or BNC terminations on digital cables are supposed to be better than rca (not truly 75 ohms). Do you have some kind of power conditioning? Does you system sound better at 2am than at 7pm (because of dirty power)? lots of things to consider.