"DCS Delius" DAC direct to Amp?

Audiofreakgeek, I agree there is certainly a lot of difference between the Delius direct and the AA components (CD players) direct. I did not own the Prestige, but I do own an AA Capitole II. My experience with the AA equipment direct is that it is "beautiful" sounding, rich, textured and extremely warm = beautiful music. This in the end turns out to be too warm/beautiful to me. In the right mode, it can't be beat, but I just can't listen to that unnatural sound ALL the time. But to me, the biggest problem with Audio Aero is that the equipment is extremely unreliable, poorly manufactured by a French company that offers terrible service and little to no support. Jody is great up in Canada (the distributor, Globe), but even the best distributor cannot compensate for a poorly made product and a mfg. that just doesn't seem to care about the US market. Maybe if I lived in France and was French I would feel a bit more comfortable, but short of that I am done with that company.

Blackstone, I am glad to hear that you were able to get these results with the Delius. I have significantly upgraded power cables on my DCS gear, pretty good digital cabling (transparent) from my Duet and Transparent balanced from my CDP to the Purcell. I have power conditioning from PS audio and dedicated lines, one for power amp and the other for digital installed in my room.

I have run numerous preamps with this combination: Aesthetix, ARC, Jeff Rowland, BAT, Cary and presently running (temporarily my Krell HTS 7.1 in direct mode). Even with this Krell HTS 7.1 (which actually has a very good preamp section when run direct), I find that the performance with the Krell is superior to the Delius (in my system and set-up). I will give it another shot as you suggest and re-position my Wilson speakers. I have found that with various preamps in the past, I needed to tweak my speaker position based on the preamps used and I did not go to nearly the same effort when I tried the Delius direct. This may have contributed to my less than completely satisfied performance. I think my cabling is fine and I did play around with various balanced interconnects between the Delius and my Krell 300c amp. I will try as you suggest with my existing cables and report back my experiences a second time.

Blackstone, I felt the entire range tightened up a bit with the Krell versus direct. I found that the sound stage expanded with the Krell vs. direct, and with that there was more air/space in the sound stage and better focus of the individual components in the sound stage.

But and this is a big but, when I put the Krell back into the system (after taking it out for the direct running from the DCS), I also made adjustment to the speaker locations. With my Wilson speakers this can be quite noticeable. This is why I want to test the direct connection again to confirm the case as whether the direct vs. Krell was really an improvement or just the result of speaker placement.

The Krell actually has a pretty good (actually better than just pretty good) preamp section. It is based on the Krell KCT preamp (but does not include the cast connections). Obviously when I use the Krell HTS 7.1 as a 2-channel preamp, it is a direct/clean signal path (balanced in/out and no processing by the HTS). I suspect the Krell (HTS 7.1) could be bested by several other preamps I am considering (ARC, Aesthetix, BAT, Rowland, etc. . .), but not by a tremendous amount.

I am interested in your comments on the CI Power supply for the Duet and am going to look into getting one. I just had new dedicated lines installed 2 weeks ago and it definately took a little bit of time for them to burn in (about 50 hours) for the sound to settle down. I was surprised at the marked difference between the virgin new power lines and the same lines after running my system for 24 hours straight (obviously not listening the whole time). Initially I felt the new lines significantly reduced my sound quality (not just a little bit). Now, the sound is significantly better than prior to the install. I am talking major difference, nothing subtle at all - like listening to an old receiver with bad speakers to listening now to a good system - that different.