PS Audio Perfect Wave DAC upgrade to DSD?

The Stereophile measurements of the CS 2.3 show an irregular frequency response above the bass, including a lack of energy around 1 kHz and an sizeable rise in the higher frequencies. If you are having issues with sibilance -- it’s not you, it’s the speakers. Other reviewers pointed out "glare" and such.

Exaggerated HF can give killer dimensionality, "air", and that sort of thing, but it also can be really irritating.

I agree with those who suggest auditioning other speakers before changing the DAC. If you’re buying used, Google first to see if measurements are available, and consider models with smooth and reasonably flat, or slightly declining, HF response. They will sound less exciting but also less fatiguing and closer to the sound of a live concert.

Room treatments: really good idea.

And please look at those measurement in Stereophile and think about whether the speakers should stay in your system, given the issue you have mentioned.

@thosb -- Thanks for the reply!

I’ve been in a situation where auditioning speakers required a 4-hour car trip. It’s tough. After buying, I found that what had impressed me were the acoustics of the listening room, not only the speakers. So my journey into room acoustics began....

I will go out on a limb by making a general recommendation with very little knowledge of your tastes. If you can’t audition, and if you like acoustic music mainly, something in the British monitor tradition might be a great choice -- one of the Harbeth, Spendor, Stirling, or Graham models, for example. They are known for natural timbre and smooth frequency response.

I’ll close with the view of an old audiophile. It is interesting to me to participate in different fora. On AV Nirvana, DSP is king. Here, people put a lot of stock in cable swapping. On the Steve Hoffman forum, it’s LPs and midpriced equipment. And so on. After 55 years of doing this, it seems to me that changing cables is a thing to consider after everything else is right. It can sink a lot of money for results that are much harder to hear than fixing fundamentals -- which I consider to be speakers and room acoustics. It is more difficult to do the fundamentals -- the items are bulky and heavy -- but the improvements to be found are incontrovertible.

Whatever you do, I wish you a lot of pleasure doing it!

It affects us all:  Impressions of speakers change over time, as we listen to them more. What seemed impressive at first can become irritating after six months' listening. I have no magic bullet for dealing with that (but I'm pretty sure the answer isn't swapping cables).

I have found that eliminating slap echo and taming first reflections tends to reduce treble irritation, though it reduces spaciousness at the same time. I've concluded that the spaciousness lost, though pleasant, probably isn't found on the recording, but rather generated by the speaker in the room.