It's been an interesting few months here in hifi land. I had my De Capos listed on Audiogon for quite a while, but since I never got a reasonable offer within driving distance of my house, I decided to hold off on selling them (I just don't want to risk shipping them). And in truth, I'm still having my love/hate relationship with them (in spite of friends who love my system and think I'm crazy to even think of selling the speakers).
Recently, I decided to buy a Benchmark DAC1 to replace my old Pioneer PD-65 CD player (that now shares transport duties with my el-cheapo Sony NS500V SACD player). I have to say, the DAC1 is really nice sounding and brought a new level of clarity, focus, and transparency to the sound of my system. That being said, it has not done anything to alleviate my ongoing frustration with the De Capo's unforgiving nature when playing less-than-stellarly recorded voices, horns, strings, or most over-compressed rock music. The DAC1 is definitely not one of those "it made all of my CDs more listenable" products, but on the good sounding stuff it really sounds wonderful.
To be honest, I'm still thinking about trying to find a speaker that does the good things that the DCs do, but without the annoying lower treble thing I hear on some recordings. Speakers from Harbeth, Spendor, Audio Note, and Cain and Cain have all been on the "wishing I could hear these darn things" list, but for now I'm going to hang tight.
In fact, this weekend a couple of guys are coming over who were kind enough to let me listen to their SET amps in my rig. Some of you guys have told me not to give up on the DCs until I hear them with a better amp (my current amp is an old Mac 2100) and source, so I'm anxious to hear how they sound with the new DAC and a good tube amp.
I'll keep you posted as to what happened after the get-together.
