Lumin T2 dac gone bad? distortion "spitting" "splatty" in mids/highs


I bought my Lumin T2 from Audiogon and noticed on many songs a mid/high distortion that sounds like a cable might be loose or a bad connection somewhere.  Finally after hours of switching out cables I decided to bypass the DAC and use my Anthem STR DAC (via usb) instead.  Spitting sound gone!  

Is this a common thing?  I found out that Lumin's customer service is in China and they don't have an 800 number so I had to email.  This ought to be very interesting.

Note: that most of the time the dac sounds fantastic!  It's only on those transients that I hear a "splatter" if you will at ALL volumes.    
dtximages

Showing 2 responses by bwguy

Make sure you set the Anthem to analog bypass, otherwise your T2 analog signal gets converted back to digital when it goes through DSP, which will degrade the quality.  The downside is you lose room correction and bass management, but you will get a cleaner sound.
I also wanted to mention  my T2 sounded terrible on some songs until I set my Classe Sigma processor to  digital bypass..  It cleared up the distortion I was having in some songs and the music was much clearer overall.  It made quite a difference.