Just to make sure that what I said about absolute phase is clear, I was not referring to the connections being wrong.
Reversing the plus and minus of one channel to the speakers, for instance, would mean that RELATIVE phase is incorrect (relative between the channels), which would produce totally and obviously messed up results for all sources. That was not what I was referring to.
An ABSOLUTE phase problem would mean, for instance, that a dac or cd player internally inverts the phase of BOTH channels. The effects of that would be subtle, and not immediately obvious, but could conceivably account for the symptoms you described. Whether or not a component does that is usually not described, but you might want to do a Google search using the model number of each component in the cd path, plus the phrase "absolute phase" (with the quotes).
I have no specific knowledge to comment further on your question about transport and dac synergy or alternatives.
Hope that helps,
-- Al
Reversing the plus and minus of one channel to the speakers, for instance, would mean that RELATIVE phase is incorrect (relative between the channels), which would produce totally and obviously messed up results for all sources. That was not what I was referring to.
An ABSOLUTE phase problem would mean, for instance, that a dac or cd player internally inverts the phase of BOTH channels. The effects of that would be subtle, and not immediately obvious, but could conceivably account for the symptoms you described. Whether or not a component does that is usually not described, but you might want to do a Google search using the model number of each component in the cd path, plus the phrase "absolute phase" (with the quotes).
I have no specific knowledge to comment further on your question about transport and dac synergy or alternatives.
Hope that helps,
-- Al