Havent tried it in my set up. I have few vintage amplifiers didnt have a time to bring it to my tito's haus for critical listening. But what ive tried was to use my xindak speaker cables, becoz something happend to his sakura amp and initially he thought it was his speaker cables. In my opinion, u dont need a dac if your soft ware is from cd player or turntable. cdp's has a dac inside. i use dac if my music is from my cpu, celfone...For sure mababago ang tunog kung ibang amp gagamitin mo. Kc speaker cables palang ang pinalitan ko nag iba na agad ang timpla ng speakers wat more if amplifier. di ba? About compression listening, talaga compressed ang tunog sa kanila. Sa palagay ko, We should not expect to much with their set up. Basta a rule pa rin, kung ok sayo, ang naririnig mo, yun na yun. Saka there's always a room for improvement.