hard 's'

Hi everyone...

I wonder if anyone has any ideas about what could be going on with my system. I own a pair of Neat Mystiques which are being run by a Unison Research Unico (stock). Speaker cable is Ecosse. CD source is Rotel RCD 971 ...right now my Link DAC III is being repaired (for the fourth freakin time!!!), interconnects are old MIT's (soon to be replaced) and coax cable is kimber D90 (at least i THINK that's what the model is)...own a cheap Panasonic dvd player - dvd RV31...

here's the deal:

I'm getting really hard 's' sounds when i sit in the listening area - bad sibilance. Sometimes it just makes the music sound more 'crisp' and 'airy', but more often than not, it's out of hand. It's VERY bad when i use the Rotel on its own, but it's not as bad when i'm using the Panasonic DVD player to play my cd's (and overall, it seems to sound better than the Rotel on its own without the DAC, which i find kind of odd).

off axis (eg when i'm walking around the room), the system sounds good - good prat and air. But i reiterate - in the listening position, it just gets too 'hard' sounding on the 'S's. I don't recall how bad / good it is with the dac in place b/c it's been in the repair shop for almost 3 months...

Any ideas? Any thoughts?

Also, to anyone who's owned Neats, any ideas how to deepen the soundstage (the seem very flat- like a wall of sound)

thanks in advance and my apologies for the poorly written post - too tired and sick to be clear and concise at the moment :S