Denefrips Pontus "burn in" period?

@jjss49 : all DACs need filters to eliminate our-of-band high frequency garbage. These are call aliasing filters and suppress frequencies above 22khz. No music there! What you said was wrong: "... without filtering for clearest most balanced sound". Otherwise high frequency junk gets dumped into the audible band without filters!

Running Tannoy XT8F’s

not sure whether these will easily show the performance difference that a pontus will bring over a pro-ject dac, but i would think so

the pontus also has various settings... should use os without filtering for clearest most balanced sound... pontus gets murkier in nos mode

pontus also benefits from a cleaner bit-stream signal... gaia ddc or other similar purifier can help the dac perform at its best - it is also known that the pontus does not play particularly well with b-s node digital output - you may connect with alvin to understand the details

Pro-ject happens to make good stuff. When my phono preamp was being repaired, I bought a $129 Pro-ject phono preamp from Amazon and it was not horrible. There are several issues IMO. There is the break-in issue. I don’t judge anything before 30 days, although I find differences seem to show up in 2 weeks or so. Second is, depending on what you value musically, the Pro-ject may be giving you what you need. In my experience, the better digital gives you a more realistic presentation of acoustic instruments and a better sense of space. Just sounds more "real". This may not mean anything for you. I also agree that cables make a difference, but the Blue Jeans are good enough that you should be able to judge. Right now, my advice is to calm down and give things time to settle in and adjust your ears to the new sound. This is all a product of the "new and improved" way of buying audio components through the internet and not by listening and comparing at the dealer. The world has changed and we have to accept that if we are going to buy audio through our imaginary impression of whether we will like it, sometimes we will be wrong. I have bought unheard as well, but always with a return privilege.

@jjss49 sorry forgot to mention speakers! Running Tannoy XT8F’s

I would hope to think that my system, while not super high end, would be resolving enough to hear a very noticable difference between a $350 dac and a $1700 dac! I do hear a slight difference, the Pontus is perhaps a LITTLE clearer. But not by much. I'll just give it more time.....

"Most gear including cables need about a month to burn in". LOL! More malarkey from the "golden ears" contingent!

Put on your parachute. DACs don't need a warm-up or "burn-in". Stop listening to the uninformed and delusional! Mechanical things need a bit of "run-in" time - but not electronics.

I had that exact amplification chain of RP1 and ST100 and compared 3 DACs - Qutest, Brooklyn DAC 2 and Bryston BDA3. The new DACs Qutest and Brooklyn 2 took around 200 hours to sound their best (closed in, murky and confused before they settled). I ended up with the Qutest.
But I digress…the point is the Rogue set up is more than resolving enough to highlight the differences between the DACs. Are your speakers up to the task though?
Give the Pontus 200hrs of run time. If no improvement then it is what it is. 
Few more things to take into consideration…

1. The best power cords should be on your source components (DAC, preamp)

2. BJC cables are decent but they’re not great. Something to consider as a potential area for improvement. They should still allow you to hear the difference. 

op did not mention his speakers - he may well not have a system resolving enough to hear a meaningful difference

the pontus is very good, especially in terms of portraying an expansive soundstage and excellent tonality notable in its warmth and body -- though treble may have a touch of grain, even with an excellent source signal

As you may know Alvin ships his DACs with 100 hours of burn in. This is a very cool thing. Not many makers do that. Now when orders back up could the 100 hours turn out to be 5 hours?

I bought the same DAC in December. I was traveling for the holidays 

so I loaned to a buddy to get some hours on it. 

 The instructions advise against turning it completely off.

Rather use the standby mode.

It it does not sound better than the the bluesound something  is very

wrong. Contact CS at Denafrips and let them review setup with you.

If it is defective there is a warranty. Use it.

Yea give it every chance and THEN kill it..

I know nothing about that unit but some of the fancy rigs have teflon caps and silver clad wire/PTFE. All of that stuff can drive you nuts trying to get it Broken in. 

I've never been real to up date on DACs but gear in general, usually, the better the gear, the longer the break-in.  Especially big high voltage boutique caps. 500-1000 hours.. Cables that aren't at least, conditioned take a while to break in too. Copper with silver clad.  Copper plug, drop and walk.. All that can make a difference. 

Then there is the chance it's a pile.. I can make Yoko Ono sound like Barbra Streisand with my rig.

What you don't want is Barbra Streisand sounding like Yoko Ono.

@jin78 It'll all be fine. Don't jump just yet. Most gear including cables need about a month to burn in. It'll be fine.

@oldhvymec noted on the use of burn/break. 

All right fellas I unplugged the thing for the night, will continue to break in / power down for another week and check back here. I'm not completely giving up on this thing yet. 

I agree with oldhvymec. You need to turn it off overnight or at least several hours.Give it a try.

Another thing is to cycle it off and on. Once a day is good. Let the caps discharge and then bring them back up.

BTW you break in equipment, you burn in tubes and light bulbs and burn up equipment. But you break in gear, equipment, cables, shoes and you favorite hat.

Yup, I burnt in a motor.

NO you break in an Engine. Words count. Be patient, THEN toss it off the overpass.

Regards

When I first fired it up I wasn't blown away, matter of fact it sounded kind of congested and stiff, bright, etc. I thought I heard some improvement recently like it was kind of starting to relax, but went ahead and compared to the other dacs and its not as improved as you would expect it to be, even though it hasn't been the "ten days". I just sat there changing inputs back and forth, not noticing a very noticeable change. Very little. I mean, my Pro-ject was a $350 dac, and this Pontus is $1700, with SO MUCH PRAISE, I'm having a WTF moment right now. I'm crossing my fingers hoping this thing starts sounding "more analog" like everyone is saying...I threw on my Rega P2 with Dyna 20X2 cart and started thinking maybe I should have bought more records...LOL. It's not like my analog rig is THAT fancy you would think this DAC would hold its own...IDK. 

Every piece of equipment is different. Audio Research I have noticed has a very definite and incrediblly reproducible pattern (I broke in three Reference 160s amps… and 2 Ref Preamps.

But the real question to ask is, did your new unit sound great? If it did, forget about burnin. It is when you get a unit and it sounds closed in, harsh, and with ill defined bass that you have to calm yourself by saying… it need breakin.

My ARC gear needs roughly 120 hours to stop sounding trebly with poorly defined bass. Then it sounds great… then back and forth for about 40 hours. Then it reverts to sounding great…. And slowly improves to around 1,000,hours.

But every piece of equipment breaks in differently. So, unless it is not meeting your expectations, relax and enjoy your new piece of equipment… and I bet over time you will say, “wow, you know, that sounds better than when I first got it.”

Don't hold your breath.