grainy sounding high end system

Make sure all of your connections are good. It never hurts to double check everything. Once I had a pre-amp wired backwards (L & R) internally on one input. Plug your amp straight into the wall. Avoid using a power strip if at all possible. Make sure the speakers are placed out in the room. I am sure you have played with speaker placement already. That won't fix a grainy sound. Power conditioning can help eliminate grain and lower the noise floor on the CD, DAC and Pre-Amp. Good power cords help too. Make sure your equipment is warmed up. Some amps don't open up until they are nice and toasty. I leave everything on 24/7 except my tube pre-amp.

Now, get yourself a new set of tubes from Andy at vintage tube services (www.vintagetubeservices.com). Go with his advice, and buy the best ones possible. Grainy sound points in the direction of bad tubes. I got improved bass, top end, detail and soundstage with my new tubes.

You could try playing with cables next or look into a better transport. Cables could be the problem, but only if you are using real cheap stuff. You are wasting your time playing with cables until you get new tubes. The transport would be the most expensive change, but probably a small improvement considering the DAC you have is highly rated.

One other thought, you might look into a tube ouput stage DAC or CD player.

Good Luck,

Stewart

Not knowing your cables, I will assume the cables are not the problem.

I would try to demo a different digital front end and see if that is your problem. Try to demo a nice one box CDP. If your sound is still grainy, the next likely suspect is your preamp. Make sure all of your tubes are good. Maybe even try a backup set of tubes if you have one. See if you can demo a nice preamp. If grain is still persisting with a demo preamp.... Make sure all of your speaker drivers are functioning. You could possibly have a blown or have a defective driver. You might want to check your speaker drivers first.

If none of the above solves your problem, well it is probably your cables. You need to demo different cables to see if that grain goes away.

If it's not your ICs or none of the above... you might want to goto an ear doctor and have your hearing checked.

Good Luck!

KF

I know somebody's gonna' shoot me just for saying this. But I'll bet dollars to doughnuts(whatever that means), more than any other component or combination thereof, it's probably your amp first and foremost.

My list of potential culprits include in descending order:

1. ML amp.
2. Line conditioning and/or Dedicated lines and circuits and/or Cables.

How do, Zaikesman? Thanks for the advice and I passed on that product.

-IMO

Hi folks, thx for your response. I started this thread before I decided to get my preamp tubes replaced. Tube aging might be the culprit of the problem. The system sounds not only grainy and dynamically compressed but there is also a higher than normal noise level.
I think my audio system should sound OK (at least on paper) and without the abovementioned artifacts. But despite all the efforts I've made the last few years I haven't even managed to get a musical sounding "baseline" system. And this is quite frustrating.

Getting a musical sounding baseline is much more difficult with digital and SS gear.

The pioneer transport (I once owned it), is vibration prone, even when you are spinning only the little platter in the middle.

Are you confident in the quality of your DAC? I am not personally familiar with it, however, getting musical with digital for me meant moving up to 16 and ultimately to 24 bit DACs.

Beyond lousy digital playback, I generally associate compression with amplifier limitations. I have heard some pretty sterile sounding, fatiguing and expensive amplifiers in my day.

If you bought your speakers from a dealer, have you considered asking him to let you swap your electronics into his system?