Sogood: Yes, selling the DA10 was one of the two regrets I have made over the last few years....the other being the ARC VT130 which smoked the VT100 and sells for far less here on Audiogon. Both the DA10 and VT130 are absolute runaway steals in performance and price.
Elberoth: The Lens benefits highly from aftermarket power cords. Both the Purist Dominus and Kubala-Sosna take the unit as far as the unit itself does in the chain. Other PCs that I tried, NBS Statement and PS Audio Statement made very little difference. It is quite incredible what some PCs do to digital gear. Makes no sense, but a return to the stock PC and the ambience and life in the music is significantly reduced.
And yes, a super duper digital cable is the same improvement as the PC. I went from a cheapo cable to the MIT AES/EBU and this was quite a nice gain in clarity. I then changed to the Marigo 5.7 and wow, even bigger. So maybe it is not so much what these more expensive cables are doing but rather all the damage that the cheapo cabls are doing.
Yioros: I got my Lens for $450 a couple years ago. It has the plastic remote but who cares as the remote is used only to power the unit up when power goes down. It is too bad the unit does not have a power-on switch as I would never need to use the silly remote at all. And yes there are different versions but I understand this to be only the firmware.
John
