musician aquarius r2r dac any good?

@viethluu

With regard to issue three, I think it is system specific in my case. You can perhaps check with other people here who have the Aquarius.

My question is: why do you pick the terminator over the Aquarius if the terminator will be the slower DAC?

I don’t think Sandu meant that the T+ is slower than Aquarius, rather slower than other hi-end dacs. The T+ is in a different class than the Aquarius. I would choose the T+ as an upgrade because it is in the price range I could afford (willing to pay) buying used.

My impressions are based on Sandus´ reviews. If he is wrong with regard to the T+ then perhaps someone could correct him. However, you have a point, Sandu should have mentioned the dacs that were better than the T+.

"I’ve already covered quite a few R-2R ladder DACs by now, some of them were magnificent sounding like Denafrips Venus, Audio-GD R7 and Musician Aquarius. All of them had their pluses and minuses, but I feel that today’s unit terminates them all, climbing an aluminum throne as the best sounding DAC I had the pleasure of testing at my place."

"The amount of information that comes forward is staggering and as much as I liked the Musician Aquarius and that yummy sounding Rockna Wavelight, Terminator Plus goes a little higher, delivering a clearer, a punchier and a faster overall performance."

"Terminator Plus reigns supreme in here, closely followed by a Rockna Wavelight, Musician Aquarius, Audio-GD R7 and Denafrips Venus."

Again, for perspective, the Terminator + costs $8850, and if you add the GAIA it ups the total cost to $11,300.  The Aquarius costs like $3135 all in.  

@viethluu Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa - I meant to reference @auroravengeance who stated

 @arafiq  the Aquarius is basically a clone of Denafrips Terminator. Musician is an original brand created by the company that develops and manufactures Denafrips stuff in China, that is why Musician and Denafrips’ stuff look nearly identical. Denafrips is just a brand created by a distributor company in Singapore.

Denafrips is much more than a brand.  Their products as you agree are engineered at a higher level.  The Aquarius uses Femto clocks the Terminator OCXO and the Terminator has separate power supplies for the digital and analog sections.  I don't believe the parts in the Musician DAC's are better than Denafrips.

I had a Terminator and now a Terminator Plus with an Iris DDC.  The Terminator prefers the I2S input.

FWIW the prices quoted by @soix are Singapore dollars the US equivalent are $6460 for the TP and $1790 for the GAIA, my Iris was $ 550.  The Iris was less expensive than the Clock cables, less expensive than the power cord and less expensive than the HDMI cable I use with it.  For me it fixed the gremlins with USB.  

Pontus II + Hermes DDC with OCXO clock is in your price range. I’ve shared my thoughts in another recent thread, so I won’t go off about it here, but the combination, in my system, is far greater than the Pontus II alone and the price is still not that high. It makes the Pontus II alone sound comparatively unfocused and unappealing to me.

Side note of interest: according to some online data I found, OCXO (in the Hermes reclocker) is approx 50-100 times more frequency stable than TCXO technology (in the Iris reclocker). I’m not suggesting that the Hermes clock replaces the duty of the Femto clock in the Pontus II, but my opinion is that it adds magic and the premium for using both devices is certainly worth it, at least in my system.

@anzaanimalclinic Ah crap — thank you for the correction.  My bad.  Prices now look like $6405 and $1772, respectively.  Still, it’s more than double the price of the Aquarius so the principle holds.  A much more apt comparison would be with the Venus ll.