Can you get the stock power cables back on dac and U2? And use generic or DH Labs USB. Set the baseline. It’s very possible that your cables are influencing the annoyance in the presence region. Do you have silver or rhodium plated connectors somewhere in the chain?
A higher resolution component is usually not a drop and go or plug and play. Unfortunately making a major change like this may require additional changes elsewhere in the system. It’s voiced for the previous configuration.