Undertow,.....I'm glad someone else understands what I'm trying to say. First of all, I'm a beer budget guy, so I'm pretty limited on what I can work with. It's been easiest to "synergize" my current system for certain music types, and getting acceptable results from many of my hard rock CD's has been an effort.
My previous CDP was a well regarded budget unit, and although I enjoyed how detailed and deep it sounded, it's overall balance was tilted more towards the treble, and some of my rock CD's had become painful to listen to. The last time I enjoyed these CD's was a couple years prior, when using a Theta Chroma 386 dac (I started to regret selling it).
I decided to try a couple popular DACS, and the Valab was one of them. It was decent, overall. Sounded smooth and dynamic from top to bottom, but sounded less 3d and lifelike, then what I was used to. AT one point, I popped in a rock CD, that I would be hard pressed to listen through just a single track, on my player (Linkin Park's "Meteora", and I ended up sitting through the whole CD, and listening at the highest volume level I've ever had my system at, and I really enjoyed it. I now understood why so many people say the Valab is a very easy dac to listen to, and just enjoy the music.
I ended settling on a completely different CDP, which has turned out to be a balanced compromise between musicality and critical detail, and I'm once again enjoying a wider range of not only music types, but recording/mixing qualities.
BTW, I'm using Magnepan IIc's with less then optimal room placement, so you can imagine my difficulties in "rocking the house", although I am using dual Velodyne servo subs, which greatly helps.
