Gustard U18 with Gustard R26 dac?

Great!  Thanks for the follow up and very much look forward to your impressions of the DH Labs cable. 

@soix 

I do think there was a slight improvement with the DH Labs cable, but I was swapping out interconnects at the same time and haven't done any seriously listening with the two different HDMI cables.  I need to do that some time.

This is unrelated, but I got a new interconnect that I wanted to try with my SACD player.  I decided to a/b test the SACD play against my dac and streamer.  My son (a musician) and I both gave the edge to the SACD player. We both felt that something was off, so I checked the setting on the dac and the filter setting had somehow gotten changed from "fast" to "slow".  I changed it back to "fast" and we both felt that the edge now belonged to the dac/streamer.  Pretty interesting.  On the fast setting, you get more detail and bass is punchier.  Anyone listening to this dac on medium or slow is not getting the best performance out of it.

That would coincide with what several others said in that a better — and sometimes a much more expensive — HDMI cable made a slight improvement.  I’m definitely gonna give one a try at some point, and if you get any clearer picture down the road I’m all ears to what you find, and thanks a lot for the follow up!