Pharmaboy
Headphoneus Supremus
This is a very rational suggestion IMHO.Hi Nayyte. If I recall correctly, your R1-NOS is still fairly new, isn't it? While I don't own one, I have read they take many hours to settle in and reveal their true sound. How many hours would you say the DAC has played? Just making sure it's fully burned in before you decide it's not right for you (but if you do decide that, I may want to buy it from you!).
I've never heard the R1, but I owned the DAC-19 & NOS-19 DACs that came before it. In the Head-Fi thread for these DACs, a number of users stated up to 500 hours of burn-in was requiree before the sound stabilized. I thought that must be insane. It had to be wrong.
Well, they were absolutely right. The sound was all over the place for a good 400 hours. The variability slowly calmed down over the next 100 hours. By 500 hours' burn-in/use, the sound was stable (and very good IMO) for both units, and never changed thereafter.
This may have something to do with the elaborate, multi-component power supplies Audio GD typically uses. If you open up the relatively large case of the R1 (none of these DACs are exactly compact), you'll see it's stuffed with multiple circuit boards and components Just a guess on my part, but something has to explain these really long/totally legit burn-in times required by Audio GD DACs.