Thanks for the tips. The interior of my CD transport is black. All my components are acoustically isolated. My point is that simply cleaning the laser lens worked a miracle in my case. Virtually no digital hash remains across a broad spectrum of CDs (not counting the poorly mastered).Why didn't I think of this from the get go!
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.
Showing 5 responses by pmboyd
Thread on coloring the edge of CDs: https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/does-coloring-the-edges-of-cd-s-help-the-sonics |
I pulled up the output trode in my dac. That is, instead of seating the 5670 at the very bottom of the socket, I seated it approx. 3/16" higher in the socket. I did a double take. So I returned the tube to the fully seated position, resulting in a return to distinct vocal glare. Now I know the tube pins are thourougly clean and the dac brand new (I clean tube sockets routinely as well). Hmmm..I wonder it I was experiencing micro-arcing at the pin tips. Soemtimes it's the little things. The difffernce we equivalent to replacing an interconnect. And a lot cheaper. |