Sorry for the wayyyy delayed feedback regarding the DC-115. It's been in my possession for awhile now. However, during this time, I've been reluctant to give my stereo a serious listen. Been seriously busy with school. Also, the acoustics in my room is pretty shoddy until this last weekend.
I removed some furniture and a PC from the room, and the acoustics improved quite a bit. So, I finally took some time to listen to some music via laptop/foobar/usbdac and turntable/DC-115.
First of all, the room has been a big factor. Since I moved into a new place, I've been using this "extra" room as both stereo and study room. The room rings when the music gets loud especially during higher pitched human voice frequencies. For some reasons, this tempered down after I removed some furniture (a wood desk and chair) and a PC.
Second of all, it's impossible for me to A/B my turntable before and after I installed the DC-115. I had DC-115 soldered to my turntable motor at work. And, it sat on the engineer's table for about a week before he had time to get to it.
Third of all, I swapped out speaker cables from 47 Lab's OTA wires to Grover Huffman's S bi-wire about a couple of weeks ago.
However, before swapping turntable psu and room change, my digital and analog sources sounded pretty much the same. This is true even after I got the Gruffman speakercables. Maybe they were equally affected by the room. I don't know. But, they sounded much more similar than dissimilar. In fact, I thought the only reason why I kept the turntable was for aesthetics reasons since it had no audible advantage over the digital.
So, time forward to present. Room acoustic is still far from ideal but at least it doesn't ring anymore. After furniture removal, the room is a bit more spacious "sounding". And, maybe removing the PC improved the AC in the room a bit too.
Together with the DC-115, I can now distinctly hear the difference between analog and digital now. Analog just sounds more live. The timing and the impact has more there there. Before I thought the entire system sounded too rounded and soft. It still is, but the analog now sounds much more detailed with different sounds (ie instruments from voices) much more distinct from each other and more solid. Maybe another way to describe it is there's less smear.
Anyways, long over due review. Sorry that I can't isolate the DC-115's benefits since lots of time have passed as well as other changes.
Other comments: The thing is built very well. And, it's a lot larger and heavier than I thought it would be from looking at web images. Very impressed with build quality. Would like the LED to be dimmed just a tad.
And, although I didn't get to use my stereo much during the last few months, I did leave the DC-115 on all this time just to make sure it's well burned in.
