ARCAM rDAC

Mark,
It's great that you are having such good success with this unit.
Having looked over description and specs of the rDAC and having owned several Arcam sources, I am wondering if this unit might not benefit from:
- a better DC power source (e.g., a battery) than the relatively inferior switching pwr supply provided;
- isolation and vibration damping.

Wondering if by chance you might have tried either of these in achieving your good results.

I just hit around 245 hours running it full time. Been an interesting trip.
0-3 hours start-up, VERY warm sound, My helicon 300 MKII's never sounded better. Highs were a hair overly crisp. The detail was good.
70-100 hour point, extension of the bass is gone. High end seems a little distorted. The detail was still present. Listened in 30-45 minute segments a few times during this burn-in time.
157 hour point, the distortion at the high end seems to settle down, imaging was fair.
210 hours, same as 157 with the exception, detail is better.
235 hours, the overly warm sound when I opened the box, is gone. Now the low end is detailed and tight. While it’s tight, I would love to know what it measures. I’m not sure how to write this, I wonder if the output at around 200hz and under, is low “under-performing”? How do you do a sine wave and measure it?
The mid-range and highs seem detailed and clear. Imaging is good, but, I believe it excels in detail of the music.
I do get the sense that the out of the box wow factor is not as good. With great material, the Dac does a pretty good job. With poor material, obviously not that well.
Most music listening is done with electronic, jazz, rock and classical.
Just got off the phone with my dealer. I have some low freq music. I'm thinking of hitting the Dac with 20+ hours of it and see what the response is.

I picked one up last week. Really surprised by how good the thing sounds for under $500.

I've blathered on before about various DACs that I've owned such as Red Wine, MHDT Havana, Tube Audio Design's TADAC and the Empirical Audio Turbo-3 which was paired to these DACs with very spendy digital cabling, both USB and SPDIF. I've also owned the Bel Canto DAC3 and Benchmark DAC1. Anyway....as small/unassuming as the RDAC is, the sound is incredibly clean/clear and non fatiguing. That's with a 12' cheap USB cable.

I'm running it through a Classe SSP pre/pro, into a tube amp and then into a $6k+ pair of Living Voice Speakers. Macbook and a demo of Amarra Junior (also very nice software so far). I know, the Classe is not ideal, but.....

I just purchased the rDac and rWave combo. Not being overly pleased as the sound was very shallow I searched the forums for help and discovered that the power supply is a huge weak point with the rDac. I have recently purchased a Paul Hynes Designs SR3-06 power supply and OHG the difference is night and day. The music is balanced and almost equal to a straight digital playback from CD. I digitized all my music to FLAC and play back from my PC. I also get a kick out of bringing my computer outside during parties and mixing up the music depending on what is going on! Very happy with Arcam products.