The Lush is the polar opposite of the Curious, as in reduced treble energy and a tiny loss of decay and detail, BUT it kills in the body and weight stakes. It sounds so natural. Like a sugar rush, detail is intoxicating and attractive, we rush towards it. But the Lush nails it with the right amount of treble energy, and if you give it time, you realise it is all there, just not over egged or too much (sugar) on the cake. I am actually most probably going to keep the Curious for a while, to ensure I have this correct. But so far, the Lush is the business.
It is both ridiculous and technically wrong that we have ANY parts in the signal chain that are not transparent. I agree with that and the techies who bang on about transparency. But I am thinking some things in the chain can actually bring some things in the FR too forward, so even though they are transparent, they over egg it. My target sound is good vinyl or live. I don't try and compare to other DACs.
On the TotalDAC USB, I had the original cable but with a different DAC, and using an M2Tech EVO full stack at that time. So USB > M2Tech >SPDIF > DAC. The TotalDAC cable is great in a noisy server situation, but I felt it slowed things down while cleaning the line. If you have a clean server you don't need a filter type of cable IMO. The later 1.8K TotalDAC cable is supposed to be better, but my view is, if the source is clean enough, you don't need the filtering. Less parts = less loss.