Best place to purchase a new Denafrips Pontus II

Hey @ozzy62, you mentioned that you may be considering the Iris reclocker in this thread, so I thought you may be interested in a cool discovery a made in my Denafrips setup.

I'm running USB into a Hermes DDC, then to Pontus II DAC via I2S.  The really fascinating thing I ran into was the big improvement in sound quality when I upgraded the power cable on the Hermes.  I initially thought the power cable choice on the Hermes would have the least sonic impact of all components in my system, so I have been lazy about swapping it out with something better.  But, I found that going from a generic 16 AWG power cable to an Acoustic Zen Krakatoa cable (9 AWG, 6N Zero Crystal Copper + Silver) is an incredible improvement to imaging and focus, and to overall resolution.  I was really happy about that because the Krakatoa, although very sharp/acute in details, thins out the low end too much on my system when it's used on the Pontus II, as well as on other components.  But it's a fantastic match with the Hermes, fwiw to you.

@gladmo 

What are you using as a transport/streamer?

@ozzy62
Good question.  I've been comparing my laptop USB output to an unmodified Bluesound Node 2021 out via both coax and optical to the Hermes with Krakatoa PC (then I2S to Pontus II), and also connected directly to Pontus II via coax and optical.  All of those combinations for the Node sound pretty similar with a minor discernible edge when routing through the Hermes, but connecting the laptop to the Hermes with a cheap, thin USB cable is on another level.  Transients are much more defined.  I've been testing this with tracks that have very high pitch percussive sounds, such as triangles, chimes, and even the reverb itself that's been added to guitars/bass, synths, and sampled sound effects (a la Yosi Horikawa).  Laptop USB to Pontus II is quite nice too, but it's missing the various effects that really precise transients adds, IME.

Alvin says that I probably won’t notice a big difference with DDC since I am using a Lumin streamer. He says it is needed more when using a computer as a source. So if I do anything it would be to step up to the Venus II. But the Pontus sounds so good, I’m in no hurry to do that just yet.

BTW, are you using the Pontus in the NOS mode? Initially I thought NOS sounded better, but now that I’ve got a few hours on the Pontus, I prefer OS with the slow filter more often than not.

@ozzy62  yeah, OS with slow filter.  Detailed and natural sounding