Master/slave link

[Foggy916]

First post here.  I'm a new owner of a 400 and am loving it.  Driving my Raidho D2s with great success.  Been doing some tweaks and wanted to report my findings on the link cable.  I love the stock Crystal in the sense of it's great detail but it does seem that I'm getting a little bit of harshness at louder volumes.  So, after reading this thread, I decided to give the RCA to AES/EBU a try and purchased a very inexpensive Monoprice cable for $5...yes, that's $5!!!!  http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=11...1&format=2

Surprised by the quality for $5 and even more so I'm surprised by the sound.  Initial impressions are that the harshness is totally gone and I get what most others are reporting which is a warmer more analog sound.  Sounds great.  Only down side is that I might be getting slightly less detail and separation but if so, it's a very small difference.  The benefits far outweigh the loss of detail.  Tone is perfect and non fatiguing even at higher volumes.  Would love to try out the Audioprana and see how that compares.  More to come.

Been trying out different power cables as well.  Shunyata Alpha Digital, JPS Labs Kaptavator and PS Audio AC-12 (which fits under cover).  Need to decide which one to go with so I can start the search for the second matching cable.

My apologies but I believe I got ahead of myself a little.  After a serious sit down and repeated switches between the inexpensive Monoprice RCA to AES/EBU and the stock Crystal cable, I have realized that my initial positive reaction was a bit overdone.  Was so happy with the loss of harshness at loud volumes that I was initially fine with the loss of detail.  Now that I listen more, I have to say that the loss of detail and separation is not small and there is a big trade off for the warmer analog sound on the Monoprice cable.  My guess is that this is more to do with the inexpensive cable than the actual interface of the different connections.  Will have to give a higher quality (such as the Audioprana or maybe the Acoustic Zen Absolute 110 custom terminated) a try.