Without knowing your entire digital chain & system, we will be speculating as to why you’re missing musicality in your setup. If one thing sticks out like a sore thumb is your DAC description of ‘fancy upsampling technology’. A DAC with a poorly implemented filtering or upsampling algorithm may lead to a unmusical sound…..It appears you may have stumbled upon one of those ‘accurate’ sounding DAC’s that are everything but musical :-)
Please provide more details about your setup for constructive responses.
Can You Beat Simple?
I am trying to upgrade my digital source, but ultimately I find that the simple solutions work best. For example, I installed a DAC with asynchronous USB and fancy upscaling technology. I added an aftermarket power supply, RCA cables and USB cable. It sounds fantastic, actually. It does almost everything better than my CD player it replaced, except for one thing: musicality. It’s very fun to listen to and you can hear details like no other, but when I try to sit and relax and just enjoy the music without over-analyzing it, my cheapo CD player (an old portable one actually) with upgraded power supply is more relaxing, musical, and most importantly, emotional. What’s going on here? Why doesn’t modern technology take the cake in this situation? Are we heading down the wrong path with all this fancy technology including upsampling, asynchronous data transfers, ultra-high bit rates, etc? Does anyone ever stop to ask the question: Can your solution best a cheap portable CD player that should have went extinct with the dinosaurs?