My streamer doesn't have a good fantom centerDSP

Sorry...  my point wasn't really related to where my journey took me.  It was that I heard differences between every product I listened to and you could consider a similar approach.  

The DAC is the voicing of what comes out of the Streamer and has a big impact on what you'll hear.  If your other sources can give you the sound you want, I think you need to find a Streamer/DAC that works well with your system.  I listened to several products, narrowed down to a couple that sounded good in showroom, then demo'd those with my system and compared to my vinyl source.

My vinyl side is pretty quiet and the other finalist (Linn something or other) just couldn't get there, mostly in musicality in this case.  The X1 beats the vinyl in most recordings and now I use the Lumin preamp and go straight to the amp.  Again, my journey...  but I think you should listen for yourself.

Listen to ERIK.

@mswale 

Love the Hitachi gear. Have you looked into @soix ’s suggestion?

@devinplombier Thanks, I do love the gear, after spending weeks doing a full restoration it feels like it's part of me now. In fact have a unrestored same setup in the garage. 

yes, I had already done what he suggested, also swapping cables. Also swapped in another set of speakers, same thing. It's not a phase issue, as I stated, I used Tidal to check phase with all the test tones. This is how/what I used to setup my speakers in the first place. As said, it's not always the issue, it comes and goes. My other sources are wonderful. 

No idea how setup is fine 80% of the time, the other 20% isn't. This tells me, that speaker placement and phase is good. The odd duck is the streamer, even odder (is that even a word?) would be the different streams.  It might be time for a new streamer with a better DAC, or I just bite the bullet, getting a stand along DAC, that I don't really want to do. I'm out of outlets. 

@mswale 

One of the better vintage DACs might be a good match for your system?