Unforgiving DAC or add Tube Preamp??

@audiotroy One of the advantages buying used is essentially an "in-house audition" if you are smart and buy right you can listen at your leisure then resell and move on, I did it for years. And frankly resolution is overrated. There are plenty of older dacs that have fine resolution and excellent musicality. My current DAC an original Audio Note Dac-3 Signature was built in 1995 and sounds great.  Audiogon is at its heart a website for buying and selling used equipment I was offering the OP a few good looking used options from the listings.

What about a tube pre amp? Not a solution?

Can i ask that we back this up? First describe the system more fully. transport, preamp, amp, speakers, etc.
What material are you playing and complaining about? In my opinion there is great digital that i can only tell from analog by the absence of clicks and pops, and absolute crap digital that I can;t listen to. I cant listen to some of those in analog either to be honest.... An example of superb digital is "Ella and Louis" (Verve ~ 1960) Another is Pink Floyd’s "Wish you were here".

Next - before we suggest magic digital cables, let’s ask an important question - is this SPDIF? If so is it a proper 75 ohm cable? Not just a regular RCA?

Depending on the transport we could have a bunch of jitter. Improperly terminated cable (not 75 ohm) would ensure jitter and outright errors.

I don’t know the benchmark directly, but have heard that it’s kinda analytical. Not a fan overall. But apparently you liked it when you auditioned it, so i cant say for sure.

First, adding consonant harmonic distortion and rolling off the top (tubes) wont fix some of the digital harshness that can occur. That stuff is just non-harmonically related trash. So the tube preamp may soften it a bit, but is really not, IMO, an answer. You will wind up with tolerable mediocrity. not my goal.

So back up, and let’s first find the problem. Then, maybe we can fix it. Throwing a bunch id random ideas around is an expensive, ineffective solution.

If it comes down to a different DAC i would consider some oldies (Theta DSPro), The Chords, Schiit BiFrost or Gungdir multi-bits (,multi-bits tend to sound more laid back IMO). The Schiit BiFrost Multi i heard (out of the box) was fairly laid back.  Yet none of these is relaxing on screechy, badly mastered rock - mid 80s being about the worst.
As i have posted in other threads, jitter is a huge issue, and since SPDIF has the SOURCE as the mater clock, even a good DAC wont fix it unless they go to extreme lengths.  For example, i thinjhte Gen* was the first Theta to completely re-clock.

G

Turntable

Jond boy are you wrong, we have consistantly found that newer dacs invariably outperform older ones and in many times the newer units are less expensive. 

The Remiyo dac was superb in its day it is very likely that a new Dac like the Ifi DSD would just blow it away in terms of all the performance traits like imaging, depth of sound field, clarity and musicality. 

Used to sell the Audio Note Dacs and they were impressively musical, howerver, when you hear really good digital you have both the musicallity and the resolution that makes music sound more realistic. 

Then you miss the ability to actually go into a store or order a few different pieces and then see which one of these products sounds good 

The used world means you are always chasing ghosts of what was good years ago, when newer value oriented dacs like Schitt, and Denefrips and IFI and T+A dacs would probably embarrass some very expensive dinosaur products. 

Caveat Emptor, If we could afford it a brand new car would always outperfom the older model, sure the older car is older and cheaper but is it as good of course not in everything the world evolves.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ