Do you recall "instant improvement" from your first stand-alone DAC ?

hey OP

all you mentioned in your post are exactly what i have heard. 

now, there are more nuisances in the music. details that are more clear and distinct

but let me be clear first, 1) that all depends on the quality of the DAC you purchased 2) the synergy of the system. 

you have a great dac but the reminder of the system cannot reproduce such detail. then nothing else will happen, a slight improvement maybe ??

OR. the dac you got is not any better.so the results may be marginal. really hard to tell the outcome. I wish all will be good as per your expectations

OP

just to add more to my post above, my first DAC was a Chord Mojo, then tried SMSL, then Chord Qu test, then went up the Denafrips food chain Ares and finally Venus. All these aforementioned DACS presented music on its own way. 

Some say most DAC sound the same. True if your gear's synergy will not at par. But if you had the correct synergy, you would hear differences. A friend of mine who has the Lamp Atlantic TRP wanted to hear if his TRP would make a difference in my gear and so we did a shootout between his TRP versus my Venus. YUP hands down the TRP is a league of its own. music details and nuisances are presents even on streaming media and Vocals are so surreal that I realize I have a long way to go just on my DACs alone. But DSD recorded data stored on my Eversolo dmp-A6 was the true source to beat. Unfortunately, i could not afford the TRP. and so I am back to my trusty friend