Stellar Gain Cell DAC, left channel gremlins, and the growing suspicion that the problem is me

Audio Components
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Hi all,

Gather round for a tale of distortion, paranoia, and a man crawling around behind his rack with a flashlight on a Saturday.

Some backstory. I’ve owned my Stellar Gain Cell DAC since June 2018, and it has been back to Boulder three times. In April 2021 the right channel went silent and it was fixed under warranty. In October 2022 one channel started distorting, and PS Audio fixed it again even though it was out of warranty. (Thank you.) In September 2024 the right channel distortion came back and they fixed it a third time.

I want to be clear that PS Audio service has been fantastic every time. Scott, TJ and Chris deserve medals. At this point I think they recognize my handwriting on the box.

So when I recently heard distortion in the LEFT channel, my first thought was that the left channel had been watching the right channel get all the attention and wanted a trip to Colorado too.

Then I did what any reasonable audiophile does. I spent an afternoon testing everything and slowly losing my grip on what clean actually sounds like.

The distortion showed up on everything: Roon, my CD player over Toslink, and vinyl. I heard it through headphones plugged straight into the GCD, so I couldn’t blame my amp or speakers. (I tried.) Upsampling to DSD64 made it much better. DSD plays quieter, but it also sounds wider, which I don’t fully understand but I’ll take it. It was worst from a cold start and got better the longer I listened. Either the DAC warms up or I do. Possibly both.

I also have two phono preamps, a Parasound Zphono and a Cambridge Audio Alva Duo. Even after everything warmed up, the Zphono made the left channel worse and the Alva Duo cleaned it right up. Nobody tell the Zphono. The Zphono is what i was using when I first heard this issue.

Then I cleaned behind the rack and reseated every plug and cable. So much dust!

And now it sounds pretty great?

Which leaves me with the question every audiophile eventually faces. Is something actually wrong with my gear, or is the problem the guy in the listening chair?

Here’s my realization. The better a system gets, the more it reveals, and that includes every loose plug, dusty contact, ground quirk and temperature swing. A clock radio doesn’t care if you reseat its cables. A resolving system notices everything, and so do we. We’ve basically trained ourselves to hear things that would make a normal person just turn the music up and enjoy it.

So I’d love to hear from the group. Has anyone had a GCD with distortion that cleared up as it warmed, and did it turn out to be a real fault? Has anyone heard one phono preamp make a GCD sound noticeably worse than another, whether from output level or grounding? And would you send it in now, or keep listening from cold for a few days before calling Boulder again?

My plan is to listen from a cold start over the next few days and try not to overthink it. (I will absolutely overthink it.)

Thanks for any wisdom, sympathy, or gentle mockery.

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James

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I too had the SGCD, but sold it for a Gustard X30 (a mistake? Maybe) Something seriously happened to mine, so sent it back to the dealer, who passed it on to the UK distributor, who fixed it with a new Dac board, so it was basically a new unit. My next big purchase will be a Gold Dac, as I miss the low end bass

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I own a GCD which I returned to psa for a “fuzzy” channel. It was out of warranty but was repaired by replacing an entire circuit board which I was told was a problem with earlier units. I continued to use the unit and had no further problems, but it has since been replaced by a Stellar gold DAC. -End of story. I am hesitant to sell the GCD to anyone else, but rather would trade it in on other PSA equipment.