We have the same model, so i have a few questions: What's the Red Roller? the reason i bought the 9168 was to tweak it, sounds like you've done it right! the psu has its own stand? try a mapleshade brass weight on it!
I tried mapleshade footers & those sounded terrible. small maple blocks did better, but still. After tooling around with it for a week or 2 i decided to mod my pc & I am soooooo glad i did. if you want a stock 9168 for $100 (to tweak internally) lemme know.
if you are really into burning, i do recomend going back to your pc. however, if i were to do it all over again I'd spend $200 or so on a top end Plextor external burner rather than the 30 hrs inside my pc tweaking. Then again, the good sound i now have is directly related to cleaning all the contacts, removing vibrations and installing nice cabling. Plextoor seems to make the only high quality burners avail to folks at a reasonable cost, and their burn evaluator software seems top notch.
last question 'cuz i'm about to order some Venhaus cabling....the Flavor 4 design is twisted as to eliminate rfi/emi issues. Did you experience a benefit from using the high wire wrap on the cable? I'm about to build a Flavor 2 and a Flavor 4.
I have the BPT PPC. their products are really well made, and that Demo CD is amazing. being from st. louis its kinda cool to talk smack about the Lake of the Ozarks when ordering gear!