Cables to settle brightness

@bondmanp 

I would suspect your streamer. I highly recommend Aurender. Either one of there lower level models or an older one. They are detailed and incredibly natural sounding. I have two of them after owning and researching the daylights out of the others. There is a reason Aurender are the most used streamer at audio shows. They mitigate most deficiencies in networking. I run mine directly from wall wart WiFi extenders and have vinyl level performance.

Using cables to tame brightness isn’t going to work to change brightness! Period! 

+1 on the Aurender streamer—mine has been a solid performer.

i posted the following in the parallel post on cables that add a touch of brightness to the sound... bears repeating here, imho

i would add, to several who have commented that one should not use cables to alter the tonality of one’s system -- that sometimes we have a system that is excellent in many regards, works very well, pleases us mostly, but just needs a little touch of treble boost or a slight, subtle mellowing of the edge...  this is where cables can help --  i view them as ’last 1-2% adjusters’ for a good system that is pretty much doing what we desire, kind of fine-tuning tools in the ol' tool kit so to speak

it happens, we have all been there...

@bondmanp - are you sure it is not the Denafrips dac - was this in your old digital chain that sounded better?   It is unlikely a streamer nor cables that will cause harshness in the top end whereas a DAC can easily be the cause. 

Having said that, I did find on an old Naim CD player that upgrading the mains cable reduced some of the harshness.