AIR 3 Sound Quality Observations

[Mohmm]

I agree with your comments. I found also Audirvana and Air 2 sounds artificial. I had Linn and Naim over five years   . Regarding my problem with Air 3, I will try to downgrade to Yosemite or El Capitan 10.11.4. I read in different forums that 10.11.5 broke the direct mode, maybe it's the cause of my problem. I really like Air 3.

I'm currently running OS X 10.11.3 and iTunes 12.3.2.35 with no issues and resisting the temptation to move to later versions until others have thoroughly de-bugged them

I downgraded to Yosemite 10.10.5 a few minutes ago. Hope it will work.

I play music via

Roon 1.2 (direct mode, integer) > Dirac > AIR 3b > ethernet > D800

on OS 10.11.5 without any hitch and with perfect SQ. Now AIR's performance comes close to feeding the D by XLR into the AES/EBU input.