walter: you've already gotten a number of good suggestions. permit me to attempt an ordering of possible fixes, including a couple of my own. first, i agree with famaraca that you should give your cdp a bit more time to break in. when i got my boulder 1012 pre/dac just before christmas, i ran it continuously for >200 hours before doing any critical listening. since then, its run at least another 600 hours while ive listened and broken in cables/ic's/pc's. it continues to improve. if the sound of your emc-1 doesn't improve after longer burn-in, you might try some different ic's and/or pc's; these can greatly affect the sonic presentation, even rolling off some frequencies, as you may be experiencing. third, send your unit back while it's still under warranty, particularly if the first two "fixes" don't work. fourth, live with the fact that your player's dac uses sampling algorithms as abstract7 describes, which may not be optimal for your tastes. finally, do not, under any circumstances, give into the pathetic ploys of the tireguy and send him any more chocolates; my sources say he already eats on average 8 pounds per day of m&m's (blue only). -cfb