May you suggest a valid alternative? I am thinking of a beautiful ESOTERIC (eheheheh).
You know that Esoteric is part of TEAC?
From the Esoteric website: "In order to bring the highest level musical experience to demanding audiophiles, TEAC launched the "ESOTERIC" brand which exclusively engineered and manufactured high end audio products."
When I was looking at streamers the other one I was looking at was Lumin - either the D2 (streamer + DAC) or U1 Mini (streamer only). I found a good deal and went with the TEAC instead.
Why don't you just try exchanging the TEAC, it sounds like you got a defective one?