How I tamed digital glare.


For months I have been trying to eliminate digital glare in the my system, which showed up most noticably in the upper middle frequency vocal range, especially female vocals. I tamed some by replacing the stock fuse in my dac with HifiTuning Supreme Cu on the sage advice of Chris Van Haus of VH Audio, resulting in a significant improvement in tonal density, detail and clarity. So far, so good. Today I lightly dusted the laser lens in my CEC transport with a microfiber cloth and was astonished to discover a substantial improvement! And the laser lens and drive compartment appeared clean to begin with (in a smoke free environment). I tried cleaning contacts, swapping power cords and interconnects, rolling the tube in my MHDT dac, and so forth, but this simple protocol was more effective than any of those experiments. I suppose results may vary as every system is unique, but for me this simple tweak was revelatory: greater clarity and a signifcant reducton of hash. Wish I had thought of tt in the beginning; it would have saved me considerable time and frustration.
pmboyd
“Perfect Sound Forever.” Apparently there are quite a few people who swallowed the marketing slogan hook, line and sinker. 🐡 🐠 🐟 🐡
stringreen
I have an Ayre C5xemp....ain’t no digital glare

Are we to assume all of your previous ones did? 😬
@pmboyd
i have the Shunyata Defender and love it. Best 200 bucks I have spent in my system. Give it a try with confidence, you can always return it if it doesn’t work wonders in your setup. 
spenva, how many Shunyata Defenders (SD) do you need? One for each outlet that has audio gear plugged into? In my case, I have powered speakers, so one each for them as well? Or would it be one per household circuit? I also run all my power cords to a Furman 15pfi power conditioner, so should I plug a SD into the back of it as well?
geoffkait
“Perfect Sound Forever.” Apparently there are quite a few people who swallowed the marketing slogan ...
It's actually worse than that. They not only believe and embrace the slogan, but they have built a whole belief system using the slogan as the foundation. Any information that conflicts with the slogan is dismissed with the wave of a hand, or with an insult - as demonstrated by some of the deleted posts in this thread.

It's unfortunate, because it could be useful to have conversations about this is certain threads, such as this one. But there are ideologues here, so it seems it never ends well.