With the original DA8 usb source quality mattered a lot. A dedicated linux server in a Rasbery Pi gave it a 20% of overall boost. No getting rid of the attributes dead in dynamics, grainy and glarey, though. I understand your complaints. DA8 was 'dead' sounding to me too. But a surprisingly...

One source says it uses AK4832 dac chip (s).  BB op-amps. Looks decent, and potentially very good psu side. 

Which Burr Brown dac is it?     In my experience these numbers are mostly good for bragging rights. The crosstalk is not the only parameter to alter soundstage. DA8 was the best dac in my possession at quoted specs, but one of the worst sounding in 500€+ range.

You are in for a surprise if you get to hear some from proper R2R dac.  My assessment has been that badly recorded orchestral can sound dull and lacking 'plankton' or sub-content as easily as crappy EDM.   Computer synthesized stuff has the advantage of not having to go through any...

I have done the same thing. While i can't say for sure if it makes anything sound better, but at least my precious stuff is away from common household garbage. My computer case has 112V 50Hz (of 230), luckily only 1mA on it for some reason, so i get a reminder if i touch my dac and Apple...

Even two very similar sabre dacs are many magnitudes more different than differences between interconnects that i have tried. I can hear a minor difference between silver coated and regular cat5e as headphone cable. Cat5e is better. Very, very slightly less harsh.   I  couldn't find any...

Thousand times suggested everywhere: Schiit Valhalla 2 or BH Crack. Vintage quality integrated amplifiers are pretty decent for this kind of money.

Only one should light up. It seems you might have some household appliance shorting to null a bit and/or poor conduction from null to main powerlines. (how's your electricity bill?) A neighbour next door of me had water boiler that shorted to ground, and had ground connected to null.. i had 80V...

Love 'em with metal and etc. Only headphone i have heard that does leading edges and transients right. With appropriate chain. HD800 actually suck badly with some gear with metal and super fast rock generes.   I sheldom listen jazz, but i can easily trick myself thinking i am listening the...

Well then, more reason to try linux based system. Most of them hold cpu multiplyer constant, that sort of things. + on the soft side there is nothing but the music daemon. Out of dacs i have used with for example Daphile the ones with crappy usb side benefited most.

Isn't it more to do with hardware? The optimisation is meant to hold the hardware in check. DC-DC converters see less switching action with steady cpu voltage. There are other hardware that is switched as well, if cpu clock changes, no? I am not computer tech, maybe someone can enlighten me...

To each their own. I would have simply saved $$ if somone could have told me sooner that i need an exeptional amp and equally exeptional dac to get most out of HD800. I quess the trip is worth something too.   Understandably people seek different strengths of this phone, so for some maybe an...

I never tried to tweak windows for this purpose, as it feels wrong to me, but i have tried others.   At first i was sceptical too, but linux daemon based os-es with locked cpu parameters and other optimizations do sound better. Blacker background and more depth to the sound. This is no...

Hm, maybe he isn't trolling after all. Apart from the bold font...   The guy who disliked HD800 and prefered HD202 to em also complained about the idle hiss coming out of my studio monitors (10dB).    Apparently a ppm of population is sensitive to such things.

Have you considered trying out HD202? An acquaintance of mine prefered HD202 to HD800. Seriously.