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You did not state, that I am aware of, that you ran the stock unit for 2 months. Eight years is a long time. I‘d be curious after that amount of time if you would still feel it to be a step backwards after using it again. For kicks, I am 70 years old too and still trying to learn as much as I can about HQ sound. That is all.
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That`s correct, I initially didn`t convey in the earlier post of living with the OEM DAC provided SMPS wall wart.
Back then I was just getting into external DACs, and WAV. ripped and stored in thumb drives, & internal/eternal SSD digital music for use in my house, as prior I used HQ multi CD/SACD/DVD disc players using their internal DACs with their analog outputs fed to my house`s living room`s master source/ and various source selection A/V rack for all day music playing HQ hard wired audio distribution for my house`s 7 rooms.
When I started thinking about experimenting by trying an external DAC fed from the various player`s S/PDIF coax outputs to seek any improvement in the music`s SQ, if possible in 2016 by purchasing and trying several (actually 3, from $ 700.00 to 2,000.00, to finally 500.00) DACs of various pricing and claimed SQ performance in search of finding one that provided me with as close as I could get, or preferably exceeding to my 2 existing highest quality optical based media player`s analog output.
The last DAC purchased was the Pro ject S2, and it provided the best SQ to my ears and other interested curious friends for 2 months.
But there was a very mild residual digital glare that was present when my best long time owned reference CDs when played through the Pro-ject brand S2 DAC, so I decided to purchase the highly recommended for the S2 DAC $50.00 at that time iFi SMPS wall wart, via Amazon for no hassle return if it didn`t help with reducing the very mild, but still annoying digital glare present, and there was a perceived reduction in the light digital glare with the use of the iFi brand HQ filtered wall wart, so it remained powering 24/7/365 the S2 DAC since.
Though there was still some perceived very, very mild glare still present, so since I was impressed with iFi`s wall wart improvement enough to look into later purchasing, again via Amazon, one of iFi`s externally powered inline S/PDIF coax digital signal re-clockers to see if the use of one or more of them inserted in the S/PDIF coax feeds might help remove that last little bit of digital glare in my music, and 2 of them did the trick, especially for my then OPPO 103 master player being fed via a high capacity USB fed thumb drive remotely located in my sunroom because of no room present in the living room`s A/V rack for it, and that player`s remote location required a 60 ft. of very HQ coax cable from the player to reach the A/V rack to get to the DAC.
I`m not interested in messing with my DAC`s setup in anyway, as I`m extremely pleased with the SQ performance, and with the highly dense audio & video wiring (AKA "Snake farm") behind my living room`s A/V rack, I`ve learned that if I fuss with anything behind it, as other perfectly functioning audio, and or video devices and their connection unnecessarily tampered with will certainly create issues that I will have to thoroughly test for and track down troubleshoot for proper functionality !
Been there, done that since the last and final for my life A/V rack upgrade in 2009, I`m too old and partially paralyzed to needlessly screw with what currently works perfectly !
