Gustard U18 with Gustard R26 dac?

@soix

Thank you very much.  That's the information that I was looking for. 👍

I'll need to order a cable of some sort. All of the hdmi cables that I have are at least 6 feet.  

@soix

Well, I ordered one from Amazon. They have a 30 day return policy, so I can send it to back if I can't notice any improvement. I also ordered a monoprice cable 12 inches long. I might get the DH Labs cable if I like the U18. 

Nice grammar (mine). Lol. 

@soix

I've done enough listening now to feel safe saying the U18 was a worthwhile addition.  It's added a bit of clarity/detail and realism to what already sounded quite good. No additional harshness.

This is with the $15 Monoprice hdmi cable. I have a DH Labs cable on order. 

@soix 

I do think there was a slight improvement with the DH Labs cable, but I was swapping out interconnects at the same time and haven't done any seriously listening with the two different HDMI cables.  I need to do that some time.

This is unrelated, but I got a new interconnect that I wanted to try with my SACD player.  I decided to a/b test the SACD play against my dac and streamer.  My son (a musician) and I both gave the edge to the SACD player. We both felt that something was off, so I checked the setting on the dac and the filter setting had somehow gotten changed from "fast" to "slow".  I changed it back to "fast" and we both felt that the edge now belonged to the dac/streamer.  Pretty interesting.  On the fast setting, you get more detail and bass is punchier.  Anyone listening to this dac on medium or slow is not getting the best performance out of it.