Steven came over last night, and we played with caps. The 400V Duelands havent arrived yet, so we're experimenting with some other ones. It has had some auricaps in it, and we changed them with Obligattos. It was a positive change, everything just sound more "together" .
Then we tried some older (2006) AudioNote caps, which I believe are paper in oil. They're heavy buggers. These were in another league, they sounded awesome on this system. They added fluidity and detail at the same time.
The Dac is now running into the battery powered Lightspeed, and the Lightspeed is hooked up to a buffer, to reduce the output impedance. I have to say, matching impedances really makes a big difference to my ears. Adding the buffer into the chain, brings the impedance down that is feeding the amps to 33ohms. The bass has improved out of sight, it's full and solid, and the midbass has weight - that was lost when running without the buffer. Is it the buffer colouring the sound, or is it better impedance matching, that is causing the change? I believe it is more likely the latter, but probably a combination of both. I'm interested to fit a volume pot in the OzKiller, and compare it to the Lightspeed/buffer combo.
An internal VC would be alot simpler, with potentially less compromises? May do that in time, but it's low on the priority list.