New Cary DMS 700

Benzman, Thanks for the info. I’ll look into it. Give your new 700 at least four days before you start any critical listening. Image focus and depth really locked in around day 4.  I've noticed additional improvements in detail and ambience up through day 12.  I can create playlists using Tidal, USB and NAS. When viewing the playlist page, icons for each source are in the bottom left corner of each album art. This is how I compare SQ of each source to each other. Same song from Tidal, USB and NAS. Makes it really convenient and fast.

I am about 220 hours in on my new 700. At 200 hours I noticed another layer of resolution, depth and clarity opening up. The one thing I have realized as a major difference between the 550 vs 700 is on lesser quality recoding's, not the digital resolution per say by the actual recoding itself. The increased resolving power of the 700 highlights and creates a high level of noticeability around the music's production flaws.   

I hear ya Joseph. They say that you listen more attentive to new equipment and maybe thats why there is a perceived improvement. You don't have to listen very hard with the 700. That's going from the 600, so from the 550 you must really be digging it.
    

Excellent thread and info. Greatly appreciated but now you guys finally convinced me to pull the plug on the 700, ordered on today.
Yippee....after reading all the potential ethernet upgrades I guess it is silly to ask but I will anyway.....has anyone tried the 5 G wifi connection to see how much sound quality suffers? 
Also,  I have my 800 or so cd’s all ripped to flac on a usb ssd and plan on attaching them to the 700, any issues with that ? I absolutely love my vinyl on Rega P8 and am hoping the 700 will help bring my digital to a similar affection in my system.

@joseph and benz....agreed the only unfortunate side effect of upgrading to better equipment is the highlighting of poor recording/mix/production flaws....alas it is not a perfect world...ha

I understand up to 7or 8 TB attached storage for USB. Not sure how big a card you can get for SD.  You should have no issues.
 I am hardwired at 2.4 ghz.  Everything runs and sounds pretty damn fine.
I have had streamers from Bryston, Auralic,Aurender, and streamer/ dacs   from Aurender ( A10), Lumin (T2),  and the Cary 600.
The Lumin T2 had wonderful transparency and detail but would get tiring after a while. The 600 did not have quite the transparency but was close and you can listen all day.
The 700 I feel ( 5 days in) has the transparency of the Lumin but the smoothness of the AKM chipset. Really liking the vocals . I would really like to hear the Lumin X1 vs  the Cary 700. Even though the Cary is 6k list cheaper I think it would give it a battle.  I am going to give it a few more days and the install the SR orange fuse. In the past the SR fuses have made a bigger jump in the pre and power amps than in my digital equipment. We shall see