Going from Counterpoint components to most of the newer Ayre gear would be a major step forward, at least in my opinion.
One thing that you might want to try, and this may sound "weird" or "over the top" to some, is to try damping the tubes. Have you ever heard someone refer to "glare" or "hardness" in the upper mids / lower treble region as sounding "glassy"? Figure it out how / where that term came from. Microphonic tubes introduce ringing and smearing into the system.
Other than that, you may have some impedance matching problems between the Counterpoint preamp and the Ayre amp. We went through the same thing with my Father's system when he was using a Counterpoint pre. I replaced it with a used $200 SS preamp and the results were staggeringly superior in every respect. While cabling can be a "band-aid" for such a problem, one would really need to find components that were either more stable and / or more suitably matched in terms of impedances.
I would also give the speakers a little more settling time and / or look elsewhere in the audio stream for problems. The tweeter that Bobby uses is known for being merciless in terms of revealing high frequency flaws. The use of the Ayre Acoustics ( imagine that?!?! ) disc may work wonders for your system in this regards.
Out of curiosity, are you using the EVS modified Panasonic DVD as a player or as a transport for the Modwright MSB DAC? Sean
>
One thing that you might want to try, and this may sound "weird" or "over the top" to some, is to try damping the tubes. Have you ever heard someone refer to "glare" or "hardness" in the upper mids / lower treble region as sounding "glassy"? Figure it out how / where that term came from. Microphonic tubes introduce ringing and smearing into the system.
Other than that, you may have some impedance matching problems between the Counterpoint preamp and the Ayre amp. We went through the same thing with my Father's system when he was using a Counterpoint pre. I replaced it with a used $200 SS preamp and the results were staggeringly superior in every respect. While cabling can be a "band-aid" for such a problem, one would really need to find components that were either more stable and / or more suitably matched in terms of impedances.
I would also give the speakers a little more settling time and / or look elsewhere in the audio stream for problems. The tweeter that Bobby uses is known for being merciless in terms of revealing high frequency flaws. The use of the Ayre Acoustics ( imagine that?!?! ) disc may work wonders for your system in this regards.
Out of curiosity, are you using the EVS modified Panasonic DVD as a player or as a transport for the Modwright MSB DAC? Sean
>