dCS Upgrade -- very strange finding

Digital Drive

Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

I bought the dCS972/954 combo 2nd hand because I was very impressed by the sound of 24/192 upsampling and playback from CD. Very listenable with excellent detail; and placement of instruments and rock stable voice location. One of the few dacs that you can listen to at lowish volume without 'missing' anything.
The software version on the 954 was 1.50 and I had this upgarded to 1.53 by dCS. Said to provide better 'drive'.
When I got this back, the sound was aweful in comparison with what was before. There was more drive and the bass was much better delineated. But the mid/hf just stood out like a sore thumb and the whole thing could not be made listenable. The frequency range seemed segmented into hf and lf and the unit was much more upfront.
So, I had dCS revert the unit back to it's original form and once more music was enjoyable with that dCS magic.
The dCS staff couldn't find anything wrong after extensive testing.
My guess is that in improving the 'drive', something was done to the software with perhaps some frequency-level manipulation.
Lesson learnt - if a unit sounds good; be very careful about upgrading it!
Does anyone else have the same experience with dCS or the 954?

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Topic - dCS Upgrade -- very strange finding - fmak 12:43:41 06/28/03 (1)

Valuable Lesson for Us All - Bob Neill 13:25:49 06/28/03 (0)

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