How I tamed digital glare.


For months I have been trying to eliminate digital glare in the my system, which showed up most noticably in the upper middle frequency vocal range, especially female vocals. I tamed some by replacing the stock fuse in my dac with HifiTuning Supreme Cu on the sage advice of Chris Van Haus of VH Audio, resulting in a significant improvement in tonal density, detail and clarity. So far, so good. Today I lightly dusted the laser lens in my CEC transport with a microfiber cloth and was astonished to discover a substantial improvement! And the laser lens and drive compartment appeared clean to begin with (in a smoke free environment). I tried cleaning contacts, swapping power cords and interconnects, rolling the tube in my MHDT dac, and so forth, but this simple protocol was more effective than any of those experiments. I suppose results may vary as every system is unique, but for me this simple tweak was revelatory: greater clarity and a signifcant reducton of hash. Wish I had thought of tt in the beginning; it would have saved me considerable time and frustration.
pmboyd
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I ran out of digital inputs on my DAC, when I added a second streaming device. I use my CD player infrequently, so I went back to the analog output on the player. I noticed that I lost a bit of detail and depth, but the sound was less fatiguing with a little less glare. Kinda backwards technologically, but the on board DAC of my 20 year old CD player was pretty good for it's time.
There is no simple answer. There are a great many reasons why someone hears glare, or thinks the sound is too hot, or too grainy, or too lean, or lacks air or sweetness. I’ve already given my top 2 reasons nobody ever heard of - the inherent vibration of the CD whilst spinning and scattered laser light. It’s like night and day.

That’s kind of why advanced audiophiles have taken to the streets and developed all manner of room treatments, resonators, CD treatments, cd transport dampers, Tube dampers, isolation stands, green pens, purple pens, dampers for printed circuit boards, graphene fuses, Quantum this and quantum that, directional fuses and cables. The whole nine yards, it doesn’t take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
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