Harsh Transport

More than likely the denon, they are a bit lean and plastic sounding sometimes as transports.. I can tell you I have been bouncing around transports, many variations of the basic concept of a disc reader can render far different results, as of a week ago I refound the fact a dac you get so use to soundwise can always give a different flavor when you change the transport, and also found some effect with digital cables.

Also the power cords in my case have had some more dramatic effects, I tried a transport once with a 12 gauge silver coated copper PC and found it hard and thin, then I decided to go try a 10 gauge copper with shield power cord and it added much weight and midrange warmth to the same Transport with perfectly balanced sound. The dac is effected too by power cords, but in my experience to a smaller degree than the transport itself.

I know it seems silly and well it is just a laser with a clock and digital out circuit, but it is effected by power supplied to it. And if in some way your power happened to fluxuate in the wall and one day it sounds pretty good and another it is something wrong and you changed nothing, it is probably from voltage drops in the house, it happens to me and I can pretty much now pinpoint the times it just sounds better during the day..

Damn I need dedicated lines one day. But I had weird things happen when they do some power work in the neighborhood and then all of a sudden my sensitive gear changes tone.. But this has not happend since they installed a new transformer on my street about a year ago.

I have a dedicated 20 amp line for the system and it does sound better at night. I'm trying different IC's to see if I can cure the problem. This doesn't happen on every disk and the Shunyata Aries sound so good. The power cord on the dac is a Zu Cable Birth by the way.

when I had the DAC2, I tried it with my Marantz cd changer and the combo just plain sucked. I have a $60 Philips dvd player that I tried and it was a huge step up soincally over the changer. Then I got the Sony S7700 and it took it to another level. However, I also had a Stereovox HDXV cable and did not like it(found it OK but nothing specail). I ended up with Virtual Dynamics NiteII and the highs were silky smooth, yet extended and detailed. Great sounding digital cable. One of the best I heard. Then I upgraded to Virtual Dynamics Master and it was another huge step up. This combo - S7700+Master+DAC2 is extremely hard to beat. With NiteII cable it was awesome too. So, yeah, your transport is contributing to harsh sound. Also, if you plan on keeping this dac, or go with separates for while, then seriously consider Virtual Dynamics digital cables. Also, Audience powerChord had a nice effect on the DAC2 as far as eliminating harshness. You have to try different things with this dac. It is excellent. And responds well to transports, power cords and digital cables.

Audphile 1 thanks for the feedback. I have since taken the Stereovox cable out of the mix and put it somewhere else. I replaced it with a digital cable I had laying around from Signal Cable. It really smoothed things out. The Stereovox seems to be a tad bright in system. But like I said ,I do want to keep a changer in the rack. Any Ideas on that?