Paul, thank you for the detailed answer. The reason I asked was that I _now_ have a completely opposite opinion of my (Cullen-modded) DLIII, however when I first installed it things were very different. It went into my system side-by-side with what was my pet DIY project for almost 2 years. AD DAC chip, Black Gate caps, separate shunt regs, exotic opamps, you name it. At first, I was very unimpressed with DLIII to say the least. Thin and strident - similar to your description. Luckily, sending it back was too complicated, and my patience was rewarded - after two full weeks. In the course of this time, the changes were so VERY obvious, it would be impossible to attribute them to autosuggestion, mind set or whatever one may want to call it. It was about hearing more things in various registers, eventually hearing reflections from room boundaries, sound becoming less sibilant, etc., etc. The biggest thing for me is that I listen to a lot of Early and Baroque music, and those period strings sound simply painful if anything is not completely right in the playback chain.
The reason I am writing this is that (my) DLIII seems to pretty much revert to its neonatal condition once it is powered down for any considerable time. It is then a matter of days to get rid of the last traces of harshness. Also, a similar thing happened last winter when a window was left open by negligence, and the room got very cold. Again, several days of recovery. Keeping this in mind, I am extremely happy with this DAC. For me, it brings out the beauty in music, so that I listen to it (and not to the way it sounds), for hours and hours. I have other equipment that may sound more resolving (the setup in my studio), or warmer (the Cambridge Audio as player), but the DLIII simply has the right magic in my system. -- pryamomimo ------------------------------------------------------------------------ pryamomimo's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=21964 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=65035 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
