@mitchb My latest Auralic product (Altair 2.2) refreshes firmware on every reboot. Which is a great feature for those of us who aren’t always paying attention to the latest updates.
I think you are implementing best practices by rebooting, especially by hard rebooting by which you are resetting the hardware. If nothing else, it should help reset digital voltage levels to valid ‘High’ and ‘Low’ levels; they can get hung up at levels that are neither fully ‘On’ or ‘Off’ and generally restrict communication. I can recall having to drop power at both ends of a serial RS232 link in order to restore communication over some relatively long line links (200+ ft). I imagine the same limitations apply even in a high speed chassis as found in modern DACs, but I could be wrong. I just think you may not be imagining things, but as other contributors have suggested, the matter deserves further investigation.
Does anyone experience sound improvement from restarting power off and on of DAC?
Does anyone experience an improvement in sound from restarting the DAC every week or so by powering off for a minute and then restarting the power back on? I’ve noticed that with my PS Audio Directstream Mk1 that I get a lot of improvement in sound if I power off at the power switch at the back of the dac for a minute and then restart the dac. I find by doing this once every 5 days or so much improves the sound quality. Does anyone else experience this? I have been told on several occasions that this is normal and not to worry.