Casual Listening

I've been busy of late, with no time for serious, dedicated listening. Then I sent my DAC in for an "upgrade," and was without my main stereo for several weeks. Now that I've submitted the book manuscript, I should have time for some musical reflection once again. Thanks for your patience. Speaking of which, I have had some bad experiences since the DAC came back. I have no reason to believe they are intimately associated with it, specifically. As you may recall, since I've discussed it here before, my current hi-fi setup puts 320kbit MP3 and Apple Lossless files on my music server, and is powered via iTunes. Content is streamed to AirPortExpress wirelessly. Issues of late have included: * crackling from one speaker * timing skips and "restarts" The timing issue took place regularly for several tracks. The track starts from a cold start, and the timing is messed up in the first 10-25 seconds of a track. It's like the speed of the track is out of sync. This never has happened without the DAC, only with. Connected tracks (sequence from one, to another) did not display the timing glitch. The crunchy stuff I noticed this evening. I checked cables. I suspect the speaker. Or the DAC? Seems it might have been the CD rip. In fact, my recording of Biber's Harmonia Artificiosa with the Rare Fruits Council is all messed up: left-channel dominance, timing glitches, and crackling in the right speaker. Tests I can try are to go directly digital from a laptop to the DAC to see if the problem persists. Or, play the CD directly, no conversion. What makes me suspect the rip is because I've heard some crunchy interpretations before on the music server itself, which drives another hi-fi system. Funny thing, is trying the track multiple times would sometimes fix the scratchy/crunchy stuff. But not so much now over Airport. I just switched now to another version of the same music, right-channel is fine.