McIntosh C48 and C50 owners-how good is the DAC?

I have owned a c48 for about 6 weeks now. I'm a bit frustrated with the DAC performance. Its very harsh when compared to my wyred4sound DAC2. Chuck Hinton at mcintosh said the soon to be released drivers for the usb will change how it sounds. Im skeptical since I was listening to 16/44 and even tried the digital coax in and still the harshness. It may verry well be a great preamp, but its got two very serious flaws:

1. The only way to activate the HT Bypass is through a 12v trigger in. My wyred4sound DAC2 has that method in addition to a very simple "HT" button that puts it in bypass.

2. The DAC is disapointingly harsh and cloudy sounding.

I've been running the unit constantly since it arrived in hopes that its a break-in issue, but as of 6 weeks out nada, zip, no difference. I guess the wyred4sound unit is just that good, but something tells me it gets better (which is why I bought the c48 to begin with).

Allen, sorry to hear about the disappointment. Sounds like something to return or exchange.

Regarding the HT Bypass, what purpose would HT Bypass button serve in a use case?

One case where a button would help (on remote) is if the user wanted to have all equipment on at the same time and toggle the HT on/off switching from say HTPC/2 CH to 5.1/7.1.

The C500 (Tube) has the same function as what your talking about and I find it working pretty well. Sometimes my Classe won't power OFF the C500 (if the C500 was on prior to the Classe power ON) via voltage trigger.

What I'm getting at is just a suggestion to reconsider the HT Bypass feature set as a problem.

Allen_bh,
Now that you have had your c48 for more than a 6 weeks, has it broken in nicely and the sound smoothed out. Mac takes a while to break in.