To be fair, there are two things that could have caused my negative impression of the quadlink:
1) I was indeed running regular interconnects from the CDP-2 to the 99, then Quadlink to the 909, as Duggeh notes above.
2) The 909 truly hadn't had the time to warm up. I noticed improvements day after day for as long as a week after I turned it on.
So how about this: next week if I find the time, I'll run an all Quadlink setup and compare it to my all RCA setup.
Duggeh, do you know anything about the guy in Italy who makes/made custom Quadlink cables? I've heard of him but never found a website or other contact info.