Help with DAC follow up

Well here goes......I got my nice dealer to lend me the Classe DAC-1 for an in-home audition, and I must say I'm quite perplexed. There was quite a difference in the sound, but inexplicably to the worse side!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I tried balanced, unbalanced, and several different cables, all to the same effect. First of all, the sound through the DAC was somewhat muted! In the manual, it specifically states that you'd get a +6 dB gain if you were playing an HDCD. Even on HDCD (I tried a bunch), the volume actually decreased by several dBs. The soundstage was wider w/o it, and vocals were suspended in air with greater ease. The other really noticeable difference was that the music seemed much more 2 dimensional (flat, for lack of better words). I know the Rega Planet is a good CD player, but I must say I was fairly shocked. If any one out there has any ideas, shoot them out there. I'm going to try a single disc Onkyo basic 199.99 player I have in a bedroom just for the heck of it to see what happens there. If it doesn't clean up or do anything positive for the sound there, maybe there's something wrong with the unit, but I couldn't imagine what.