Should I Get a DAC ?

The poster from what I can gather has acute sensitive to highs and may have tinnitus .... Please let us know?

Anyway, any change after the source of the problem will just change it or give a different flavor of the same problem for the poster. The digital front end must be addressed to in fact deliver what is needed.

That's right, Grannyring...sensitivity to highs which can result in pain, plus tinnitus which is minor.

As far as pwr. conditioning, I have a Blue Circle PC + 2 BC pwr filters inline. The Audience Powerchord smoothed out the CDP tremendously.

I like the timbre of my system and I now know that the quality of the CD source material can present a problem for me. To others that have heard the same CD thru my system, no problem.

So, at this point I'm wondering if I should use the ARC CD3 as a transport only and buy a Synchro-mesh. Having said that, I would only have a $500 budget for a DAC which is why I was looking at the Jolida. That is my dilemma and thanks for all the input so far.

You have the answer as mentioned above. I'm in the exact same situation as you. I have some tinnitus and others do not hear the glare we do. Power cords etc helped a little, but in the end, for a digital front end the EA stuff is a must.

I can now turn my music up with no problem, even mediocre recordings. It's not so much the dac. You can call Steve and try what he suggests. I think he offers a trial period. If out of your budget, then you will need to settle for the smaller helps like power cords etc.

Thanks, Grannyring. My thoughts were to address the issue of jitter--probably through Empirical Audio--rather than cable solutions which mask the issue. Very glad for your reinforcement.

03-07-14: Lowrider57
I can hear up to 19kHz, but it's actually a small range of high frequencies that bother me.

Some promising suggestions have been offered above. It seems to me, though, that what would be an ideal solution for the issue you have described is a notch filter/bandstop filter operating in the digital domain, which would allow arbitrary adjustment of the center frequency and the width of the notch, and also of the amount of attenuation introduced within that notch. You would adjust all of those parameters so as to attenuate or filter out just the bothersome frequencies.

There is one device I am aware of which provides that capability and is generally well regarded among audiophiles and sells for a relatively modest price ($1099, which happens to be exactly the same amount as the cost of a Synchro-Mesh + your stated $500 DAC budget). That is the DSPeaker Anti-Mode 2.0 Dual Core, available within the USA here. As you'll see, return privileges are offered, but not without some cost and other conditions.

The Dual Core includes a DAC function, and I believe its design would make an external re-clocker unnecessary, even if the source had relatively high jitter. However its only digital input is optical, which your CD3 does not provide. So an approach to consider would be selling the CD3 and replacing it with a much less expensive transport having an optical output. Perhaps that would even net out at a total cost of less than zero.

Or, if you were to try the Synchro-Mesh + DAC approach first and it doesn't prove to be an adequate solution you could then try the Dual Core with the CD3, using the Synchro-Mesh in between as a coax to optical converter as well as a reclocker.

Best regards,
-- Al